The Pittsburgh Steelers had a rough showing, particularly on the offensive side of the ball, while hosting the Jaguars on Sunday. But that is a virtual inevitability when you have five possessions that end in interceptions—two of which are returned for touchdowns. I would imagine that the winning percentage of teams who lose the turnover battle by four is pretty low.
Still there was a game to chart, and there were still interesting things to take away from it, and so the job must be done. Here is the latest installment of our weekly offensive charting notes.
- Personnel groupings:
- 11 – 63/81 (77.8%)
- 12 – 5/81 (6.2%)
- 13 – 2/81 (2.5%)
- 21 – 3/81 (3.7%)
- 22 – 7/81 (8.6%)
- As has become something of the norm, the Steelers have once again played roughly or over three quarters of their snaps in packages with at least three wide receivers on the field. But that isn’t even close to how the game started.
- As I noted in another article earlier today, only six of the team’s first 21 snaps came with three receivers on the field. But after that point, all but the final three snaps at the end of the game in garbage time were outside of the 11 personnel package.
- That time period overlapped with the two-minute drill at the end of the first half, running the no-huddle to open the second, and then the turning over to the passing game following a bunch of pick sixes.
- While he was active early—on 12 of the first 21 snaps—Vance McDonald did not play again until the final three snaps of the game, on which the Steelers were just running out the clock. Clearly, for now, Jesse James remains the option in no-huddle and trailing positions.
- An odd note is that Roosevelt Nix was used on a number of passing plays. On his first 10 non-penalty snaps, the Steelers aimed to pass on the play seven times—or at least checked into a passing play against a stacked box, which was frequent.
- The Steelers used Le’Veon Bell split out as a wide receiver frequently in this game—15 times, to be specific. That is the most of the season so far. The majority of it came in the slot, but he did see time outside, and in stacked sets.
- The used five-wide looks on eight plays altogether. Ben Roethlisberger completed six of eight passes with one throwaway for 34 yards, with five of the completions being successful plays. The other completion was a six-yard pass on first and 20.
- Maybe I missed something, but the Jaguars barely blitzed at all—literally one play, and it resulted in the first interception when James Conner failed to pick up the blitzer, hitting Roethlisberger as he threw.
- On two play-action dropbacks, he scrambled for a yard and completed an eight-yard pass on second and 12.
- Average depth of target – 9.5 (58 targets; 55 official)
- Vance McDonald – 14.5 (2 targets)
- Antonio Brown – 16.4 (21 targets; 19 official)
- Jesse James – 5.8 (5 targets)
- James Conner – -4 (1 target)
- Le’Veon Bell – -.6 (10 targets)
- JuJu Smith–Schuster – 10.8 (6 targets)
- Justin Hunter – 9.7 (3 targets)
- Martavis Bryant – 7.6 (9 targets)
