With Russell Wilson in the lineup, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ offense made big strides. More points, more big plays, more dominance. Those big changes can be credited to the little things Wilson did. He’s a 13-year veteran and a Super Bowl winner capable of handling the intense pressure he faced entering the game. Peyton Manning is one of football’s masters of the details and heaped praise on Wilson for his play-fakes that had the New York Jets guessing if it was a run or pass.
“‘I’m really impressed with his fakes,” Manning said of Wilson on ESPN’s latest edition of ‘The Breakdown’ with Bill Belichick. “He takes pride in his fakes. Just that little pause right before he sticks that ball in the running back stomach. The defense doesn’t know, is it a handoff or is it a play-action fake?”
Manning went through several examples of Wilson’s play-action. It’s a topic we immediately hit following the Steelers big 37-15 win over the Jets. Wilson’s veteran skillset and attention to detail created more opportunities off play-action, and the results were stark. Updating the numbers through our personal charting, Wilson finished the game 9-of-11 for 157 yards using play-action, a QB rating of 118.8. Justin Fields’ passer rating on play-action over the first six weeks was just 77.8.
The show highlighted an early completion that suckered in the Jets’ defense and got TE Darnell Washington open in the flat for a good gain and first down.
And Peyton Manning even highlighted Wilson carrying out his fake in the run game held backside players and created more running lanes for RB Najee Harris and company. The Steelers finished the game with nearly 150 yards on the ground and more than 400 yards of total offense, a feat they didn’t achieve once in the Matt Canada era. Under Smith, they’ve done it twice in seven games.
“My message to quarterbacks and Russell does this, take pride in your fakes. Make the handoffs look just like the play-action. You actually can block somebody. It’s all about effort…Russell does a great job in this game.”
Manning’s always been a stickler for details and took as much pride as any quarterback in football off his play-fakes. He filmed a clinic during his playing days highlighting the value of carrying out a great fake that turns your back to the defense and getting the defense to commit. Even in his post-playing days, Peyton Manning extolled the need for proper play-action instead of a “token fake” that Justin Fields often put on tape. “Fakes” that didn’t sell the defense and providing the offense no benefit, only hurting their mission.
While OC Arthur Smith didn’t directly comment on Wilson and Fields’ attention to detail, he referenced the same during his Thursday meeting with the media.
“Even the basics of a quarterback coming out of his fake, a lot of those actions, going back to those play-actions, however you want to term it, if they’re not consistent with it, they don’t buy the lie,” Smith said via a team-provided transcript. “There’s some teams run the ball, play-action, might as well drop back, because there’s no fake up front. The mesh doesn’t look the same.
“Those are the little details. You’re talking about a split-second to get a ‘backer to step up or move ’em. And a lot of times you go back and look at it, the tackle pops up too high, back’s too wide, bad fake by the quarterback. That’s the stuff we work on every day to improve that.”
All issues we’ve noted with the team’s play-action use under Fields. Given how frequently the team leans on it, it became a big problem for the Steelers’ offense, and one reason why Pittsburgh suddenly started firing chunk plays the moment Wilson entered the lineup. A missing link to this team of how their offense must be built. Pair the run game with the play-action game, both the bootlegs into the flat for easy completions and vertical throws over the top. Washington’s four catches and WR Calvin Austin’s 36-yard grab are all examples of that.
It’s reasonable to expect Wilson to be more adept at play-fakes than Fields, but Fields isn’t a rookie. And no matter the reason, Wilson is better at a key element of Pittsburgh’s offense. It’s one tangible reason why this unit looked a whole lot better in his debut.
