Whether it was with late-career Ben Roethlisberger or the two years without him, a lack of play-action was the theme of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ offense. Curiously absent year after year for no good reason, new offensive coordinator Arthur Smith is changing that. While the team’s 18-point total in a season-opening win in Atlanta didn’t look much different than the previous three years, how the offense looked certainly did.
Going back through the game, I charted the Steelers using play-action on 12 snaps. Be it boots, or traditional straight-back play fakes, a dozen of Pittsburgh’s snaps used it. Compared to the Matt Canada era, that is a stark contrast. In fact, the 12 play fakes Smith used against the Atlanta Falcons matched the highest number used at any point of the 2.5 years of the Canada era.
Courtesy of Tom Mead’s charting, here are the year-by-year numbers of Steelers play-action. Their per-game average each season and their single-game highs that year.
Steelers Play-Action Usage (2021-2024)
2021: 7.7 times per game
Most: 12 plays
2022: 6.4 times per game
Most: 10 plays
2023: 5.3 times per game
Most: 8 plays
2024: 12 plays versus Falcons
A continual decline in all three seasons. Smith has changed that number.
Not that it’s a major surprise. Smith’s hallmark is running the ball and effective use of play-action. He likes being under center far more than what the Steelers have done before, and Sunday’s performance was very much his kind of game. Perhaps extra conservative, he opened things up more in the second half but given the turbulent quarterback situation and unknown entering Week 1 on the road, it made sense to batten down the hatches.
How effective was play-action? It worked. We’ll have some of the charting and details later in the week, but it moved the launch point and made for some easy completions in the flat, keeping the offense on schedule. Here are just three examples. Twice, Justin Fields hit the tight end in the flats and on the third, he ran it himself.
Nothing that reinvents the wheel. It doesn’t need to. Simple, smart, efficient. It’s a trend that should continue even if Russell Wilson takes back the starting role and will be an element of this offense not seen in a long time.
