Have you heard that there is an area in the middle of the field beyond the line of scrimmage in between the hashmarks? It seems as though this was welcome news to the Pittsburgh Steelers last Sunday. They finally began to target that area—much to former Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger’s excitement right from the very first play with an explosive pass to TE Pat Freiermuth.
“I loved the start down the middle to Pat”, he said on the most recent episode of his Footbahlin podcast. “There it is”.
Notably, they continued to use the middle of the field, particularly exploiting Freiermuth’s presence. Freiermuth had only returned from a hamstring injury a week earlier, but even more significantly, they had just made a change at offensive coordinator, Matt Canada now gone and new voices in QB Kenny Pickett’s ear.
“That’s what’s been missing, the between-the-hash passing”, Roethlisberger said. “Again, is that because Matt didn’t call it, or is that because Kenny didn’t want to throw it? I don’t know. But that was a designed, play-action, get the linebackers to bite down a little bit and hit it over”.
And it was far from an isolated incident. Just compare the way Pickett’s passing chart from the win over the Cincinnati Bengals looks in comparison to the previous two weeks. We’ll throw in a game from earlier in the season against the Los Angeles Rams as well.
One thing that should be noted: beyond the return and reintegration of Freiermuth and the change at offensive coordinator, where you go with the ball is also dependent on what the defense gives you. The Bengals played a lot of Cover 2, which is more conducive to throwing over the middle.
While it’s good to do it for one game the next challenge is to keep proving that you can do it against teams that have seen it on tape. Roethlisberger wonders if the way the game unfolded had a lot to do with the game circumstances.
“They have tape on the Steelers, but they have tape on the Steelers as Matt Canada’s offense. They don’t know what to expect with Coach [Mike Sullivan]”, he pointed out. “I don’t know that the Bengals were necessarily prepared for what they saw from Sully. So, it’ll be interesting moving forward as teams start [to adjust] now they have one game of tape. Let’s see if they keep an eye on Pat a little bit closer”.
The next team with a chance to do so is the Arizona Cardinals this Sunday. Given that this was a career game for Freiermuth, I’m probably not going to put my money down on another 100-yard game.
But I would certainly like him to see a more regular and healthier dose of targets. He was only targeted 14 times in his first five games. He was targeted 11 times in Cincinnati. And if defenses work to take him away, then that just opens the numbers more, where Pickett has been most comfortable throwing.
