Checking the football down is often viewed as a negative in today’s NFL. It’s believed to show a lack of aggression in the passing game and a lack of belief in oneself under center.
Pittsburgh dealt with it quite a bit the last two seasons with Kenny Pickett. The former Steelers quarterback checked the ball down a ton to running backs Jaylen Warren and Najee Harris, and even tight end Pat Freiermuth, limiting the ability to rack up explosive plays offensively.
Now, the Steelers are seeming in line to deal with checkdowns from the quarterback again, thanks to the addition of Russell Wilson.
According to Pro Football Focus, Wilson had the highest checkdown percentage in the NFL the last two seasons at 10.19, a full percentage point above the next closest check-down quarterback in former Washington and Atlanta signal caller Taylor Heinicke (9.13%)
Wilson, on 1,099 drop backs in 2022 and 2023, checked the ball down 112 times. That wasn’t the highest number in the NFL in that span — that belongs to Los Angeles Chargers QB Justin Herbert (113) — but Wilson has the highest percentage point in the NFL in that span.
“Wilson is the only quarterback in the league who exceeded a 10%-plus checkdown rate from 2022 to 2023. It was a far cry from his aggressive approach in Seattle, where he generated just a 5.8% checkdown rate through the 2020 and 2021 seasons,” PFF’s Mason Cameron writes.
That propensity to check the ball down might have been more due to scheme than anything in Denver the last two seasons. It wasn’t what Wilson was as a quarterback in Seattle, checking the ball down at just 5.8% of the time during his tenure in Seattle, as PFF points out.
But that figure nearly doubled in two seasons in Denver, where Wilson went through two different head coaches and two different schemes. It could be that he was checking the ball down a bit more to take what was there within the scheme. Despite the high checkdown percentage, Wilson stills throws a great deep ball and has a good deal of success doing it, too.
According to numbers from Warren Sharp, Wilson has a 14.9% deep throw rate since entering the league in 2012, which is the third highest in the league in that span. Only quarterback Will Levis (one season in the NFL, 22.4%) and current Steelers teammate Justin Fields (15.1%) passed him when it comes to throwing the deep ball.
However, while Wilson throws the deep ball quite a bit, he also threw the ball at or behind the line of scrimmage an absurd amount last season, according to Sharp, at a 30.2% rate. Shockingly, that was only the second-highest rate in the NFL.
With Wilson, he’s either going deep or throwing short. There doesn’t appear to be much from an intermediate aspect in his game right now. That will have to change in Pittsburgh under new offensive coordinator Arthur Smith. He likes to utilize the middle of the field on play-action passes, taking advantage of all the space behind linebackers and in front of safeties.
Wilson likely won’t be checking the ball down much in 2024, either. The last two seasons, Smith has seen the likes of former Atlanta quarterbacks Desmond Ridder and Marcus Mariota have among the lowest checkdown rates in football. Mariota, who played in Atlanta with Smith in 2022, had a checkdown rate of just 3.92%. Ridder, who was in Atlanta in 2022 and 2023, had a checkdown rate of just 5.57%.
We’ll see if Wilson’s numbers came back closer to his career average from his Seattle days. If his checkdown numbers rebound, we can chalk up the high checkdown numbers to scheme and pass-blocking issues in Denver during Wilson’s tenure. If not, well, then this is who Wilson is moving forward, and it’s quite concerning.
