The Pittsburgh Steelers were not exactly a big-play offense last year. They ranked 22nd in 20-yard pass plays and 30th in 40-yard pass plays. Their eight rushes of 20 yards or more was 23rd, and they were one of three teams with zero runs of 40 or more yards.
Some of that had simply to do with the state of the offense in a period of transition. They had Ben Roethlisberger at quarterback for the better part of the past two decades, the entirety of head coach Mike Tomlin’s tenure here. A rookie quarterback and a still inexperienced play-caller with a young nucleus around him had Tomlin choosing to say “whoa” rather than “sic ‘em”.
“As you search for splash plays, you open yourself to more negativity”, he told Judy Battista of the NFL Network recently about last year’s offense. “We had a rookie quarterback a year ago — you’ve got to be mindful of getting him behind the chains and the collective absorbing of too much negativity when they’re young”.
While he allowed that they are looking for “more calculated risk-taking” from Kenny Pickett and the offense this year, he was explicit about their intentions last season as a rookie. “That’s just a fact — as you search for chunk plays, the potential for negativity is probably more prevalent, and we just weren’t interested in a whole bunch of negativity a year ago”, Tomlin said.
Now, Pickett wasn’t exactly a deer in headlights. His threw deep on 12.1 percent of his pass attempts last season, according to Pro Football Focus, which ranked 19th in the league in the regular season among 40 eligible passers with enough deep pass attempts to qualify. They actually graded him seventh-best on his deep pass attempts, as well, if you were wondering.
Roethlisberger attempted a deep pass on only 10.4 percent of his throws in 2021, a drop from 12.5 percent the year before, and 12.9 percent in 2018, his last full season before his major shoulder injury that prompted a change in his playing style (along with the continued degradation of the offensive line—and his knees).
But the point isn’t the make a one-for-one comparison between what the Steelers did with Pickett and what Roethlisberger was doing in his final seasons. The point is what the Steelers did with Pickett versus what they want to do with him moving forward.
And that’s going to include more “calculated risk-taking”, as Tomlin described it. After all, when you have the only qualifying pass-catcher who recorded a catch on over two-thirds of his contested catches last season, why wouldn’t you want to put the ball out there for him?
For what it’s worth, the Steelers were successfully in avoiding a whole bunch of negativity once Pickett got himself settled into the starting lineup. He threw just one interception in the team’s final nine games of the season. Granted, he didn’t throw many touchdowns, either, but they did win.
