With the 2024 preseason in the books, we can comb through our charting and pick out the most interesting and relevant data from our weekly charting that we’ll continue into the regular season. This data is less impactful, and we won’t dive in as thoroughly as we do when the games start counting, but it’ll serve as a good way to recap the Pittsburgh Steelers’ three preseason games statistically.
– These stats will be out of 190 plays, excluding the ones that didn’t count due to penalty.
– Here are the personnel groupings the Steelers’ defense used across those 190 snaps.
Nickel: 48.9 percent (93 snaps)
3-4: 43.7 percent (83 snaps)
Dime: 3.7 percent (7 snaps)
3-4 over: 2.1 percent (4 snaps)
Big Nickel: 1.1 percent (2 snaps)
2-5: 0.5 percent (1 snap)
– Pittsburgh kept the preseason vanilla until Week 3 when they did more game planning, used more dime defense, and used their over front.
– Here are the top two snap count leaders among the position groups.
Defensive Line
Isaiahh Loudermilk: 82
Jacob Slade: 71
Linebacker
Kyron Johnson: 127
Julius Welschof: 122
Jacoby Windmon led the inside linebackers with 92 snaps.
Secondary
Jalen Elliott: 105
Ryan Watts: 83
At corner, Cory Trice Jr. logged the most reps with 65 of them. Figured I’d mention him since the top two were safeties.
– In aggregate, here are the Steelers’ pressure leaders.
Pressure Leaders
Nick Herbig: 6
Keeanu Benton: 5
Julius Welschof: 4
Kyron Johnson: 3
– And on a per-snap basis, here are the leaders of the above names. The lower the number, the better.
Pressure Rates
Nick Herbig: 3.5
Keeanu Benton: 3.6
Julius Welschof: 14.3
Kyron Johnson: 19.3
The sample size is small, but Herbig and Benton had stupid good numbers. Herbig had just 21 pass rushes, while Benton had only 18. They were dominant.
Targets
Just displaying the ones with at least three targets.
Darius Rush: 1/3 15 yards
Kalon Barnes: 2/3 19 yards
Jalen Elliott: 2/3 39 yards
Thomas Graham Jr.: 3/4 42 yards
Kiondre Thomas: 3/4 48 yards
Zyon Gilbert: 5/5 47 yards
Not a ton to learn from here with snap counts and sample sizes so small. But those are the numbers. Beanie Bishop Jr. and Cory Trice Jr. were each targeted twice and allowed two completions, though Trice’s were both screens he tackled for minus-1 yards.
– Bishop blitzed nine times but didn’t register a pressure. Graham blitzed five times and also didn’t record a pressure. Overall, Pittsburgh sent 19 blitzes on 100 drop backs.
