The Pittsburgh Steelers were struggling with their intended offensive identity over the first five weeks of the season. They couldn’t run the ball efficiently. According to Najee Harris, opposing defenses were loading the box, and the Steelers’ blockers weren’t always executing their assignments or sticking on their blocks long enough.
It started in Week 6 with Justin Fields and continued into Week 7 with Russell Wilson — the run game finally started showing signs of life. Against the New York Jets, Wilson balanced out the offense with a viable passing attack, which opened up the offense and allowed Harris and Jaylen Warren to close out the game late.
“Teams can’t load the box anymore,” Charlie Batch said Tuesday of Harris’ newfound success via Randy Baumann’s DVE Morning Show. “And Justin did a great of using his legs and those type of things, but when you look at and peel back the layers, yes they were [4-2], but when they look back, they were 28th in passing. That was the formula that the Steelers have used over the last couple years squeaking by with victories. And when you see that early on, it’s like, ‘Hey, I gotta figure out a way to insert some type of energy.’ And [Mike Tomlin] was able to do that with Russell Wilson in the passing game. And ultimately that opened up the running game for Najee because now it softened up that defense.”
Here is the Steelers’ stacked box rate for the full season, per TruMedia.
The Steelers have faced eight-man boxes on 41.3 percent of their rushing attempts, the eighth-highest rate in the NFL. Their yards per carry on those plays is 3.3, which is basically league average. They aren’t doing terribly, but it also hasn’t been great against stacked boxes.
If they force defenses to respect the pass a little more to clear room for Harris and Warren to run the ball, then the offense could see a huge increase in productivity. We started to see that in the second half of the Steelers-Jets game on Sunday. And as defenses start to see what Wilson is capable of while they are putting together a game plan against the Steelers, the box will naturally start to lighten up.
The play-action passing element of the offense also worked a lot better with Wilson playing primarily from under center.
The offense had been operating with handcuffs on for the first six weeks of the season and still made it work for a 4-2 start. Now that the Steelers have freed themselves up, the dam can finally break.
