Below are the play by play pass rushing breakdowns of Steelers linebackers LaMarr Woodley and Lawrence Timmons from this past Sunday against the Tennessee Titans. I compiled these to see just how much attention the Titans paid to outside linebackers in pass protection and the answer is not much. In fact, they only used a tight end to stay in to help block either of them once and a running back never chipped in support either. The designations are straight forward below of who each linebacker rushed against. The "DNP" means that player was not in on that play. A "D" means the player dropped into Read more [...]

The offensive line breakdown of the Steelers win this past Sunday against the Tennessee Titans is finished and it was a joy breaking this game down. It was pretty evident the line benefited from the quick passing game and limited success that the running game provided. Outside of a few nice openings, there were not huge creases for Isaac Redman and Jonathan Dwyer to run through consistently. The yardage gained was on hard earned runs, but effective enough to make play action a threat. It should be noted that the Steelers had 15 of what you would call successful running plays. This means that Read more [...]

Below are the Steelers coverage stats for the week 5 Sunday afternoon game against the Tennessee Titans. They are broken down by play and include down and distance, line of scrimmage, direction, yards gained, yards after catch, personnel the offense used, defensive package, number of pass rushers and whether or not the defense blitzed on the play. The Steelers pass defense was solid as they used quite a bit of dime in passing situations. On non-penalized plays, the Steelers allowed 29 completions on 49 attempts for a 59% completion percentage. While they gave up 262 yards passing, the defense Read more [...]

Below are the formation rushing and passing stats from the week 4 game against the Houston Texans along with the year to date stats through the first 4 games of the 2011 season. One word of caution. The formations are different from the actual personnel on the field as my game charters will list an h-back player at the snap as a running back. This would mean that players like Hines Ward, David Johnson or Heath Miller for example were charted formation wise as being a running back as this gives you a better picture of the formation actually used on a play. If you want to look at the actual personnel Read more [...]

Looking at the week 4 TOX stats by game you can clearly see that the plus 2 number had a field day as it was 8-1. The lone loss involved the Panthers who put up a plus 6 TOX number. That is rare. Year to date teams with a plus 2 TOX in a game are 36-8. That is 82% and about where that number should hover for the season. Also another thing that sticks out is that teams with a positive TOX stat this week went 11-3. Teams that with a positive explosive play differential went 8-3 this week and teams with a positive turnover differential went 9-4 on the week. Year to date total wise the Lions have Read more [...]

It is that time again to look at the Steelers directional stats after the first 4 games of the season. Below are the rushing and passing stats for the offense and defense by direction after week 4. They include the Steelers NFL ranking in each of the stat categories. Rushing wise on offense you can see that running to the right, their bread and butter side, has not been as awful as you would think. Up the middle and to the left is were they really are struggling albeit they have only run to the left of middle 17 times. The Steelers are a right handed running team and have been for some time, Read more [...]

I received a few questions wondering about how much help the offensive line received this past Sunday in pass protection against the Houston Texans so I had Alan Gifford go through the 39 drop backs of Ben Roethlisberger to report what he saw and chart who stayed in on each play and who chipped before releasing. The table below shows the play by play of each drop back and as you can see, 36 of the 39 drop backs had some sort of pass protection help. 27 times the Steelers either kept a running back or tight end in to block or had them chip a defensive player on their way out into a pass pattern. Read more [...]

After week 4 the Steelers are -10 in the turnover differential stat and have only 1 takeaway thus far. That takeaway of course was the sack fumble in week 3 against the Colts caused by linebacker James Harrison. Safety Troy Polamalu scooped it up and returned it for a touchdown. The Steelers defense is currently the only team in the league without an interception. On the giveaway side they have lost 6 fumbles, a league high, and quarterback Ben Roethlisberger has already been intercepted 5 times. Roethlisberger only threw 5 regular season interceptions all of last season. He is also responsible Read more [...]

Below are the Steelers coverage stats for the week4 Sunday afternoon game against the Houston Texans. They are broken down by play and include down and distance, line of scrimmage, direction, yards gained, yards after catch, personnel the offense used, defensive package, number of pass rushers and whether or not the defense blitzed on the play. The coverage stats in no way tell the story of this game. Texans quarterback Matt Schaub only threw 21 times in the game and only 7 of those attempts were to a wide receiver. The other 14 were throws to a tight end or a running back and he completed 10 Read more [...]

It is time again to check in on the TOX stats from week 3 and the plus 2 stat took a little beating this past week as 4 of the 13 teams with a plus 2 TOX, lost. The Steelers were 1 of the 9 teams with a plus 2 to win this week. Through the first three weeks, teams with a plus 2 TOX stat in a game are 28-7 and that is right at 80%. I have updated the year to date TOX numbers in the bottom table and 12 teams have a positive TOX stat and those teams combined have a 23-13 record. If you need refresher course on what the TOX stat is, I have added the video again from Brian Billick from a few years Read more [...]

The Steelers now have 3 games in the books and there is now enough data to start tracking the formation stats. The formations should not be confused with personnel packages. Personnel packages are packages by position, not formation. All of these formations listed were at the snap of the ball and after all motions. In the formations below, if a tight end or wide receiver was lined up as an h-back in the backfield, he was counted as a running back. On the flip-side if a tight end was not down on the end of the line of scrimmage, he was deemed a wide receiver in the formation. As the table Read more [...]

Below are the Steelers coverage stats for the week 3 Sunday night game against the Indianapolis Colts. They are broken down by play and include down and distance, line of scrimmage, direction, yards gained, yards after catch, personnel the offense used, defensive package, number of pass rushers and whether or not the defense blitzed on the play. It is evident that the pass defense was good last night as they allowed less than a 50% completion rate and less than 4 yards per attempt. Ike Taylor was once again stellar as he was targeted 12 times and allowed just 3 catches on the night. There Read more [...]

Only 2 games are in the books so far so it is hard to draw any hard conclusions from the play direction stats below. The thing that jumps out though on offense is the short passing game numbers versus the deep passing numbers as the Baltimore Ravens and Seattle Seahawks were concerned about Mike Wallace beating them deep. The Steelers have been able to work the short areas nicely with all four receivers for the most part. Going forward, the Steelers need to be able to run the ball better against teams that choose to keep the safeties deep and guard against the explosive play. As far as the defense Read more [...]

Below are the passing and rushing stats from the Steelers 24-0 win over the Seattle Seahawks in week 2 that are grouped by personnel packages. Also included are the passing stats against the regular pass rush and against the blitz. Pretty obvious the Ben Roethlisberger had a nice game even though he did miss on a few easy throws. Both sacks came against the blitz, but he was 11 of 14 for 175 yards against it as well for a stellar 12.5 yards per attempt. If you missed the week 2 offensive participation chart you can view it by clicking the link. Alert me to any discrepancies you might find. Steelers Read more [...]

It is time to look at the week 2 TOX stats and cumulative totals after 2 weeks. If you missed what TOX is and want to see the week 1 TOX stats, just follow the link. It is a stat that measures explosive plays of 20 yards or more and turnover differential. Once again plus 2 fared pretty well as 11 teams had a plus 2 number this week and 9 of the 11 teams won with the Bengals and Eagles being the two teams to lose. 3 teams had a plus 1 and they were 2-1 in week 2. At the bottom I have the year to date TOX numbers and the Lions lead the NFL with a plus 13 TOX and the Chiefs bring up the rear Read more [...]

The last pack of stats I have for the Steelers 35-7 loss to the Ravens in week 1 are the passing and rushing stats of the various personnel packages that the Steelers used on offense this past Sunday. As you can see in the stats below, the Steelers did not have much success passing the ball with 4 or more wide receivers in the game which was 19 plays. Combined on those 19 plays, Ben Roethlisberger was 6 of 14 for 73 yards with 1 interception, 1 touchdown. He was sacked 4 times and scrambled once. Of course the other 2 interceptions did not help his other stats with at least 1 running back and 1 Read more [...]

As promised I am keeping up with the TOX stats this year and below are the week 1 results. A quick refresher first though. The TOX stat tracks explosive plays and turnovers and it is derived by first finding the differential of explosive plays of 20 yards made and allowed on offense and defense. The second part of the equation is to find the difference of turnovers made versus turnovers created. Your basic take-away, give-away stat. The final step in determining the TOX is to take the differential of the two numbers. Pretty basic stat, but very telling as to the success of a team not only game Read more [...]

Interesting talk this morning on Trib Live Radio as to the record of Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was discussed when he throws over a certain amount of times during a game. I researched Pro Football Reference to pull his regular season stats since 2004 and have them below sorted by attempts below with the cutoff of games in which he passed 31 or more times. The magic number with Roethlisberger appears to be 30 or less attempts a game as he is 51-9 during the regular season when throwing 30 times or less and 18-22 when throwing more than 30 times. Breaking it down farther above 30 Read more [...]

Below are the Steelers coverage stats for the week 1 game against the Baltimore Ravens. They are broken down by play and include down and distance, line of scrimmage, direction, yards gained, yards after catch, personnel the offense used, defensive package, number of pass rushers and whether or not the defense blitzed on the play. The Ravens game-plan was to use their tight ends and running backs mostly in the passing game and it was dependent on good line blocking and the receivers often times clearing out defenders, so the middle of the field would open up. They did their best to isolate the Read more [...]

One stat that former Ravens head coach Brian Billick brought to the attention of stats enthusiast a few years back was what he termed as the Fox-Tox rating. Basically the stat takes the differential of explosive plays, a play of 20 yards or more and adds it to the differential of the turnovers gained and lost to come to come up with this rating. The video below describes it in more detail, but it is pretty simple. With the Steelers set to take on the Ravens this Sunday, I thought we would look how this stat shakes out in individual games in the series dating back to the 2000 season. The two Read more [...]