Fallout claims LB coach Porter
Made news off the field
The Steelers fully embraced the NFL’s passing revolution in recent years. With quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and a dynamic group of receivers, the Steelers have become one of the league’s top aerial shows. This past season was especially impressive.
Roethlisberger led the league with 5,129 passing yards and threw a career-high 34 touchdown passes. Receivers Antonio Brown and JuJu Smith-Schuster became just the sixth receiver tandem in NFL history to each record 100 catches and 1,000 yards in the same season.
League-wide, records were set for most touchdown passes in a season (847), completion percentage (.649) and passer rating (92.9). The 11,462 completed passes were the third-most in a single season.
But when you watch NFL playoff games on wild-card weekend, the games will have a retro feel. Many of the Super Bowl contenders this year would have thrived in bygone eras of the NFL. They run the ball, protect it, control the clock and find ways to win close games.
The Steelers, meanwhile, did none of those things well in 2018. They had second-most lopsided pass-run ratio in the NFL, throwing the ball 67.2 percent of the time. Here’s a stat to ponder over the offseason: The top six most-lopsided passrun ratio teams in the league did not make the playoffs.
The top-heaviest run teams, meanwhile, are in the playoffs. Seven of the top10 running teams are in the tournament, including AFC North Division champion Baltimore, which features rookie quarterback Lamar Jackson as the centerpiece of their run-heavy offensive scheme.
The other top running teams in the playoffs are: Seattle (first in the league), Los Angeles Rams (third), New England (fifth), New Orleans (sixth), Houston (eighth), Dallas (10th) and Chicago (11th).
Eight of the 12 teams in the playoffs finished the season among the top 11 running teams in the league.
The 2018 season seems to indicate we might be at the end of one era and entering another. Pass-happy teams such as the Steelers, Packers, Falcons, Vikings, Giants and Buccaneers are all pondering what went wrong this season. The Steelers, Packers, Vikings and Falcons all were among teams considered to be serious Super Bowl contenders before the season.
Veteran NFL reporter Rick Gosselin of the Talk of Fame Network researched some interesting data from this past season. Quarterbacks threw for 300 yards or more 132 times in 2018. Those quarterbacks were 64-66-2 in those games. Gosselin also noted there were 108 players with 100-yard rushing games. Teams were 8225-1 in those games.
Those statistics prompted Tony Dungy, Super Bowl-winning coach, Hall of Famer and NBC analyst, to wonder whether NFL owners with head coaching vacancies would take heed of what appears to be a developing trend.
If the league is on the precipice of another era, it looks like the Steelers will be dragged kicking and screaming into it. When offensive coordinator Randy Fichtner was asked in November about the disparity in the Steelers pass-run ratio he said: “I have a 15-year veteran quarterback. I have Antonio Brown. Why aren’t you going to throw it?”
Here’s another statistic to ponder this weekend as Steelers fans watch the Ravens play the Chargers in an AFC playoff contest. Once Jackson took over as Baltimore’s starter with seven games remaining in the regular season, the Ravens rushed for 1,607 yards in those games. The Steelers rushed for 1,380 yards all season.
The Steelers finished the season 31st in the league in rushing. Only Arizona ran for fewer yards.
Do the Steelers need to run the ball better next season if they want to have more success?
“I don’t think it was a running the ball or passing the ball kind of thing,” offensive lineman David DeCastro answered the day after the Steelers season ended. “We spoke the whole year about how we get it done as long as we get it done. The turnovers and costly plays are what hurt you. It’s not the running the ball or the passing the ball thing. You guys love to ask that, but I don’t think it is that at all.”
Turnovers did hurt the Steelers. They had 26 of them. Only six other teams had more. All of them also failed to make the playoffs. The list — Tampa Bay, Buffalo, New York Jets, San Francisco, Arizona and Jacksonville — is a who’s who of the NFL’s worst teams.
Teams that pass more, of course, are at risk for committing more turnovers. Roethlisberger, at his postgame news conference following the regular-season finale against the Bengals, lamented the turnovers that derailed the season. He accounted for many of them, including an NFL-leading 16 interceptions.
“Turnovers have been an issue for a lot of guys all year, so how do you change that?” Roethlisberger asked. “I only like to speak for myself. In turning the ball over, I’m a guy that’s going to take chances. I could probably not throw some of the passes that have gotten intercepted and take a sack instead of forcing balls here and there that end up being good plays, but that’s the way I play the game. Sometimes, fluky things happen.”
Enough fluky things happened to keep the Steelers out of the playoffs. And now they have plenty of time to wonder if they’re operating in a bygone era while other teams playing in the postseason are at the forefront of a running revolution.