The passing game is such a crucial element in today’s NFL. Today, I wanted to look at team’s completed and intended air yardage, zooming in on Steelers OC Arthur Smith’s prior coaching stops and the Pittsburgh Steelers since 2019. The goal is to see what we might expect from the pairing in terms of air yardage in the 2024 season.
Let’s dive right in. Here are completed and intended air yards for NFL teams since 2019 (160 qualifiers), using logos for the squads we’re focused on:
Very telling visual. Positively, in Arthur Smith’s prior five seasons of coaching stops, all were above-average in completed air yards. As OC of the Tennessee Titans, they had the best-completed air yardage of focused teams, ranking impressively across the entire NFL at ninth and tenth. Quite the feat to rank top-ten out of 160 teams both seasons in the OC role he is returning to for Pittsburgh.
Also, only 13 of the qualifiers posted a CAY above 7.0, including those Tennessee squads: 2019 (7.14) and 2020 (7.27). Of course, player talent is a huge component. The primary quarterback those two seasons was Ryan Tannehill, with Marcus Mariota also playing in seven games in the 2019 season. On the receiving end, A.J. Brown led them in targets and receptions, along with the most completed air yards of substantially targeted players in both years.
What’s also encouraging is those teams were below the trendline (diagonal line), meaning they achieved their great completed air yards while requiring fewer intended air yards than most NFL teams to do so. In other words, efficient.
One opposing example was the 2022 Falcons, where Arthur Smith was the HC for three seasons. They had the highest intended air yards of focused teams (9.81), which was second-most in the NFL since 2019. As you’d expect, they were also above-average in completed air yardage (6.56) as a result, ranking 27th in the span but on less efficiency.
Interestingly, Mariota was also the quarterback for the Falcons that season, while Drake London was the primary target. Unlike Brown with those Titans teams, London didn’t top their receivers’ completed air yardage, though the top three most targeted all averaged healthy numbers.
Arthur Smith’s other coaching stop that posted above-average air yardage was last season but to a lesser degree than the previously mentioned teams. They were slightly above the mean in each, ranking 57th with 6.13 completed air yards and 8.26 intended air yards, ranking 64th. This is where we see a clear drop off in Smith’s results, unfortunately coming in most recent memory.
Important context is their change in quarterback to Desmond Ridder last season, who struggled, to say the least, despite several in the receiving corps returning. A big change on that side of things was then-rookie RB Bijan Robinson, who was the third most targeted receiver. This definitely brings a team’s air yardage down, given the position’s shorter targets on average.
The 2021 Falcons, Arthur Smith’s first year as their head coach, was his lowest result in air yardage. They had 5.98 completed air yards (74th), but what stands out as an outlier in Smith’s coaching stops is 7.24 intended air yards, ranked much lower than the other squads at 131st.
That personnel was quite different, starting with quarterback Matt Ryan’s final season with Atlanta. That was his 14th year in the league, and he never had the reputation of a downfield gunslinger, along with a lack of talent at wide receiver comparatively. TE Kyle Pitts was the primary target that season, along with two highly targeted running backs, including Cordarrelle Patterson, who signed with the Steelers this offseason.
Arthur Smith’s most talented squads aligned with more talent at QB and WR overall, along with his role as an OC instead of HC. This will be interesting to watch unfold in Pittsburgh, who overhauled the quarterback position with Russell Wilson and Justin Fields for a hopeful upgrade over Kenny Pickett, encouragingly.
For the Steelers, we see a team that has largely been below the NFL mean in air yardage, which probably doesn’t surprise many. In fact, when averaging an NFL team’s average over the five-year span, Pittsburgh ranked dead-last in completed air yards, the most valuable of the two.
The only Pittsburgh squad with above-average air yardage was in 2022, posting 6.13 completed air yards that ranked 56th, and an intended air yardage of 8.27 (53rd). This was Kenny Pickett’s rookie season, playing 13 games while Mitch Trubisky appeared in seven. Neither had stellar air yardage, with Trubisky leading in the intended department.
This Steelers team being their best in completed air yardage in the timeframe says a lot about how long and how much the team has struggled with putting air under the football. More specifically, here’s the list of Pittsburgh’s painful rankings:
2019 – 4.64 CAY (150th), 7.89 IAY (81st)
2020 – 4.82 CAY (148th), 7.09 IAY (136th)
2021 – 4.62 CAY (151st), 6.7 IAY (147th)
2022 – 6.13 CAY (56th), 8.27 IAY (53rd)
2023 – 5.19 CAY (136th), 7.51 IAY (110th).
Outside of 2022, we get additional context to Pittsburgh’s rankings bottoming the league largely and the aforementioned worst average completed air yards in the timeframe. Unfortunately, most of the rankings were well into the hundreds out of the 160 qualifiers. Interestingly, the exception (other than 2022) was in 2019, with the 81st intended air yards rank.
Again, this says a lot, considering that was the injury-riddled campaign at quarterback when now-retired Ben Roethlisberger was injured in Week Two, followed by former Steelers Mason Rudolph and even Devlin “Duck” Hodges.
The Pittsburgh Steelers have been uninspiring in these terms overall, regardless of personnel, no doubt. This does bring concern to an ability to change, but Omar Khan has made a multitude of moves that point to wanting more in this regard, including the addition of Arthur Smith.
As we sit here today, though, Pittsburgh’s wide receiver room took a hit, trading away Diontae Johnson without addressing a clear replacement in another primary receiver next to George Pickens. He seems ready to shoulder the WR1 role after his second-year leap last season and will hopefully do just that.
On the extreme optimist side of the spectrum, he can near the stratosphere of what Brown did in Tennessee. The flipside could be opposing teams being able to blanket Pickens more given the current roster construction. Smith does have the track record of his wide receiver rooms being top-heavy, with a clear number one and supportive players behind him, and he had success. Encouraging, but Smith’s work is definitely cut out for him.
Personally, considering Wilson and Fields’ success as deep ball throwers, another year stronger for Pickens, and Arthur Smith’s previous success, I feel optimistic that the Pittsburgh Steelers will be a better air yardage team than we’ve seen in quite some time.
