Game Preview: Pittsburgh Steelers

Edition #233

Good morning!

The weekend is finally here, if you’re a Mets fan your eyes will be firmly placed on the NL East Pennant race as the Mets head into Atlanta to try and seal the division title, Mets Fix will have you covered throughout. If you’re not then it’s all about the football.

Today we’re here to talk all things Pittsburgh Steelers as head to a key game in the schedule. With Pittsburgh a little banged up and still a little confused over their Quarterback situation, it’s an ideal time to face them.

We’re going to look at what they’ve done well this year, where they’ve struggled and what we can expect from the Steelers come Sunday. First, we’re going to get to some quick throws.

I’ve seen a couple of graphics recently from PFF that I wanted to share in the Quick Throw section. The below is a good indication of how well Quinnen Williams has been doing in terms of his pass-rush. The stats have not been there but he’s getting a fair amount of double coverage and he’s still winning at a very nice rate. Really positive sign that the sacks will start flowing.

Here is another graph that highlights a couple of key negative stats for the Jets, the main one being that we're very bad at avoiding negative plays and we're not that great at generating explosive plays either. The hope is that with Wilson back this will change.

Final one and again not overly positive. The Jets have been below average at forcing three and outs down at 19% on the season. I don't expect us to be at the top, but you'd really want to be around that 23-24% mark.

To kick off this week’s preview I’m going to take a look at how the teams stack up in terms of their DVOA ranking. Just a reminder for everyone, “DVOA measures a team's efficiency by comparing success on every single play to a league average based on situation and opponent”.

The Jets are at a disadvantage in every area other than special teams, and while we’re on that a quick hat tip to Brant Boyer the special team's coordinator. His unit has been excellent so far through three games. Teflon Boyer has been with the Jets since 2016 and has been retained through the regimes of Todd Bowles, Adam Gase, and now Robert Saleh.

I do think there are elements of the DVOA rankings that need to be explored further. For example, Pittsburgh is 12th in defensive DVOA but they were 8th after week two, so they’re trending in the wrong direction, and while they’re 12th against the pass, they’re actually 17th against the run.

Part of that will be down to injuries, they lost 2021 Defensive Player of the Year T.J. Watt to injury in week one, and after placing him on IR he won’t be available for the Steelers in week four against the Jets. However, they will get Minkah Fitzpatrick back who was cleared for a concussion and returned to practice as a full participant on Wednesday.

Offense

I don’t think the Steelers really know who they are on offense at the moment with Chase Claypool even saying that they’re still trying to figure out their identity, there seems to be a little discontent between the receivers and Mitch Trubisky, despite this Mike Tomlin has said that he won’t be making a chance at Quarterback with rookie Kenny Pickett waiting in the wings.

Pittsburgh is ranked 31st in the NFL with just 272 yards per game, they’ve scored just 4 offensive touchdowns through three games and average just over 16 first downs a game which ranks them 30th in the NFL. It’s safe to say that everything is failing to click right now, and while we can point to that as an opportunity for the Jets, they’ll be looking at the Jets as the perfect team to right the ship…especially considering our defense is ranked 32nd in DVOA.

But there is some friction between players and coaches. Following their Thursday night loss to the Browns wide receiver Diontae Johnson seemed to throw the coaches under the bus while saying he wasn’t throwing them under the bus: “I couldn't really tell you,” Diontae Johnson said when asked what the issues were keeping the offense from coming together. “It could be anything when it comes to them. When I say them, the coaches. Not throwing them under the bus or whatever, but, you know, we can only do what they tell us to do and make plays, and that's about it.”

For all the heat that Trubisky is taking in Pittsburgh, he was let down by his receivers on Thursday night with three drops stalling the early momentum the Steelers achieved by going to their no-huddle tempo offense. Rookie George Pickens was responsible for one of the best catches I’ve ever seen on a football field, but he was also responsible for two drops with Diontae Johnson also credited with one. Considering the Steelers only have four drops all season I’d chalk that up to a bad night at the office.

In a lot of ways, this matchup is a litmus test for both teams. The Steelers are one of the worst offenses in the league at converting third downs (33.3% - 24th) but the Jets are one of the worst teams in the league at preventing third down conversions (51.2% - 31st), one of them will likely need to give. The Browns held Pittsburgh to 1-9 on third down on Thursday and in a lot of ways that won the game for Cleveland. The Steelers also rank 32nd in the league in terms of time of possession at just over 24 minutes

What I don’t want to do here is give the impression that the Steelers offense is a walkover, as that couldn’t be further from the truth. They have some outstanding playmakers in receivers Claypool, Johnson, and Pickens, a good TE in Pat Freiermuth, a great back in Harris, and an up-and-coming rookie rusher in Jaylen Warren.

They also have a very solid line who are starting to put it together in terms of run-blocking, but who were already working well as a pass-protection unit led by new signing James Daniels who spent the first four years of his career in Chicago. Daniels has allowed just 1 pressure through three games and the offensive line as a unit has been attributed 0 sacks according to PFF, with the team allowing less than 2 sacks a game on average.

Najee Harris has been largely help in check this year rushing for just 3.2 yards per attempt with one touchdown and one fumble. His yards after contact and missed tackles forced are all pedestrian for him, but his power will mean that if the Jets don’t wrap up they’ll be in for a long night.

Defense

The flip side to the offense spending so little time on the field is that the defense spends a lot of time defending the goal line. So far this season the defense have logged over 100 minutes of playing time, averaging over 33 minutes a week isn’t sustainable and it’s a good reason why they’re 1-2 on the season.

The defense who looked gassed against the Browns last week have allowed back-to-back-to-back 100+ yard rushing performances to Cincinnatti, New England and then Cleveland, allowing that to Cleveland is no surprise, the Jets know all about that…but allowing 100+ yards on the ground to New England is noticeable.

The Jets have yet to really establish and dominate on the ground, but Sunday will represent the perfect opportunity to do so. Pittsburgh center Mason Cole knows that if the Steelers hope to achieve anything this season they’ll need to play complementary football saying:

"We gotta help our defense out," Cole said. "Three-and-outs, consecutive three-and-outs for us are not good and it kills our defense. ... A lot of people will say our defense needs to play the run better, but we need to help our defense out. It's important for us to possess the ball and have those possession downs be won."

I think we all appreciate that the Steelers have plenty of personnel on the defensive side of the ball, but like the Jets, there are things they’re not doing well enough, the most glaring one is tackle. The Steelers have 26 missed tackles on the season, and safety Terrell Edmunds is the biggest culprit with 5.

If the Steelers can plug the holes in their defense against the run, that would open up their secondary to fly around and make plays on the ball. The biggest reason the Steelers won the opening game of the season against the Bengals is that they forced Joe Burrow into 4 interceptions, protecting the football and not turning it over will be a key for Zach Wilson and the Jets this week. It’s key every week, but when you’re facing a team struggling on offense as much as the Steelers are, you don’t want to give them a short field. Make them earn every single yard.

With the Jets facing questions over their offensive line it would be nice for me to write that we’re facing an anemic pass rush, unfortunately, that’s not the case. Pittsburgh has a top 10 pass-rush through the first three weeks of the season generating 9 sacks, but their pressure percentage is a bottom 10 number at 17.6%. So they don’t always get a ton of pressure, but when they do it tends to turn into sacks. They also only blitz 22.8% of the time which is very similar to the Jet’s number of 18.1%, both around the bottom 10 in the league.

4 of the 9 sacks generated by the Steelers have come courtesy of Alex Hightower who dominated the Bengals in week one to the tune of 3 sacks. Hightower lines up on the right side of the line for the Steelers, so he’ll be facing off against Connor McDermott at left tackle, so leaving help in for Connor is absolutely imperative.

Earlier in the week it seemed as though there was a chance that Minkah Fitzpatrick may miss the game this weekend, which would have handed a huge advantage to the Jets. But Minkah is fit and he’ll bring his 15 interceptions in his 5 years to the table and he’s already matched his interception output from 2021 through three games (2). Fitzpatrick is an all-around safety, the kind of player the Jets are missing in their safety department. Tomlin said it best when he described him in training camp:

“Minkah is a serious competitor,” coach Mike Tomlin said during training camp. “... He always wants in. He wants to cover receivers. He wants to tackle running backs. He wants to blitz. He’s a football player. He’s a guy that loves football. He’s a guy that loves competition, and boy, he’s just really a good guy to have in an environment like this because there’s never a down day with him. He’s always about it. He’s always ready to work.”

Let’s just take a quick look at a stat comparison for the defense in several different categories.

It’s not overly pretty reading for either team, one aspect that clearly works in the Steeler’s favor is their ability to get to the quarterback and force turnovers, but they are vulnerable on the ground and through the air.