This goes without saying if you watched the Pittsburgh Steelers’ offense over the last few years, but they were painfully predictable. Matt Canada had a very limited playbook and those watching at home could usually guess what the upcoming play would be before it happened. If the fans at home could do that, then imagine how easy it must have been for opposing defenses. New offensive coordinator Arthur Smith wants to change that.
“We just don’t want to become obvious, right?” Smith said in a video posted by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on YouTube when asked about getting Darnell Washington involved in the pass game. “So every time this guy’s in here, in this formation, we’re only doing that. So we need everybody involved and it’ll be week to week how we want to scheme it up, but you can’t become obvious because naturally there’s gonna be tendencies.”
A little self-scouting can go a long way, and it sounds like Smith is very aware of that. One of the Steelers’ biggest tells a year ago was their use of pre-snap motion. Credit to Reception Perception’s Matt Harmon for putting this stat together. The Steelers were 30th in drop backs with pre-snap motion while being in the top six for rush attempts with pre-snap motion. If the Steelers were motioning players, they were more than likely going to run the ball. Those kinds of tendencies cannot happen.
One of the big things that has been talked about with Smith’s offense is the return of pistol formations. In pistol, the quarterback lines up about four yards behind center with a single back directly behind him. This gives the quarterback and running back benefits that aren’t present in other formations. The quarterback is still back far enough to see clearly over the offensive line and sense pressure like in shotgun formation, while the running back has enough depth to allow holes to develop and build momentum before contact like when the quarterback is under center.
Here is an example of pistol alignment from the Ben Roethlisberger days.
In shotgun, the running back aligns left or right, which is one more thing for the defense to be able to read and pick up tendencies on. In pistol, the uniform alignment behind the quarterback allows for a bunch of possibilities from the same look.
Over the last three seasons, the Steelers have run just 100 plays out of the pistol formation. That is the 13th most in the league, but still well below the offenses that truly feature it. Smith’s teams with the Atlanta Falcons ranked first in the league over that time period with 772 plays, per TruMedia. Alex Kozora has confirmed the use of pistol over the first week of training camp.
Smith elaborated on the benefits of the pistol offense.
“The pistol, you see it trending and it was big in college football. More teams were running it. We started really getting more into it in ’22,”Smith said of his time with the Falcons. “It’s a little bit different sometimes [with] your run tracks and you’re under center, but I felt we got good at it, and it just keeps the defense honest where you don’t have tendencies. Sometimes maybe on early downs, offset to the tight end or offset away giving up tendencies. It allows you to do your whole package. And then you got quarterbacks that run and then you add the zone-read element to it, and you make the people defend more.”
This is valuable information coming right from the play caller’s mouth. The pistol enables the offense to run a whole package of plays out of roughly the same looks. This makes it much more difficult for defenses to key on what is happening pre-snap and much harder for defensive coordinators to prepare for.
The element of mobile quarterbacks is also a key addition to pistol, and the Steelers have two who are plenty capable in that area. They will be able to run play-action passes, naked bootlegs, zone-reads and much more out of roughly the same look.
A competent offensive system alone should make a huge difference in 2024, and that is before you factor in the various improvements the Steelers have made with their personnel.
