What the hell happened to the Steelers?
Plus, Week 16 picks
Take a picture of former NFL quarterback Brock Osweiler. Then stretch it horizontally by 30 percent. Congratulations, you've just created late-2020 Ben Roethlisberger.
Roethlisberger told the world he’d return for an 18th season in 2021 Monday afternoon, then showed the world he probably shouldn’t in a 27-17 loss to the previously 2-10-1 Bengals. The 38-year-old was a depressing parody of his former self, shuffling out of pressure with his familiar Weeble Wobble gait only to float awful passes downfield, throw short of the sticks on third down, and occasionally get his wideouts obliterated.
This was a tremendous bed-wetting for the quarterback of a once 11-0 team. Roethlisberger needed 38 passes to throw for just 170 yards, fumbled twice, threw one terrible pass that was intercepted and several others that *should* have been. He finished the game with a passer rating nearly 40 points lower than his counterpart Ryan Finley, who began the season as Cincinnati’s third-string quarterback.
Suddenly, the Steelers have gone from potential AFC top seed to a possible one-and-done in the Wild Card Round. They may not be able to hold off the surging Browns for the top spot in the North. And, somehow, we should have seen this all coming.
Ben Roethlisberger hasn’t been Big Ben in 2020
2020 has largely been a perfect Steelers season. A dominant defense has, for the most part, shut down dangerous divisional rivals. The league’s top WR development track has turned another array of Day 2 draft picks into legit NFL starters. For 12 weeks, 11 wins, and zero losses, everything was great.
But a storm brewed behind those final scores. Roethlisberger certainly looked like his old self on the field … until he set his sights downfield and attempted to jump start his offense.
A look at the simplest measure of Roethlisberger’s efficiency — average yards gained each time he throws a pass — shows a distressing downward trend:
This is all happening in a season where he’s surrounded by one of the deepest receiving corps in the league. He’s even cut down his bad throw rate from 19 percent two years ago to 13 percent this fall. So what’s going on?
Roethlisberger is only two years removed from leading the league in passing yards, but his weekly output is down from 320 yards per game to 247. The first instinct here would be to say that since Pittsburgh is winning more than it had in that 9-6-1 season his team is throwing less, but the numbers don’t bear that out. The veteran attempted a league-high 42 passes per game in 2018. In 2020 he’s attempting … a league-high 40 passes each week.
The culprit here is a lack of confidence downfield and waning arm strength that’s hindered his ability to throw wideouts open. His average pass only travels 6.3 yards downfield — his shortest distance since 2015, per SIS and a bottom 10 mark among qualified QBs (sandwiched between Taysom Hill and Dwayne Haskins, which is … not great). More importantly, he’s not putting the ball in a place where his wideouts can create space and turn upfield, leading to a career-worst five yards after the catch average (down from 6.2 in 2018).
That last bit is absurd for a passer who gets to throw to big-play threats like Chase Claypool, Diontae Johnson, and JuJu Smith-Schuster. Monday night’s game provided an illustration of this as Pittsburgh attempted to mount a game-tying drive. Claypool somehow snuck behind a group that included four different Bengals defenders for what would have been a massive gain on a properly thrown pass. Instead, Roethlisberger underthrew his rookie, Cincinnati caught up to him, and some light interference went uncalled in a Steelers loss.
Here’s another example:
If Roethlisberger times this right and puts this pass on the money, it’s a 20-yard gain dropped into the soft spot of Cincy’s zone coverage. But he waits a bit too long and his window slams closed. Eric Ebron gets interfered with via early contact, but even if he hauls this in through traffic there’s nowhere for him to go. Instead, he gets lit up and carted to the locker room shortly afterward.
The veteran still escapes pressure effectively, but his throws on the run or off his back foot are no longer the crisp, on-point tosses that allowed players like Hines Ward and Antonio Brown to break free for big gains in big games. Much more often, they arrive a split second too late and either get knocked down or caught with little room to improve position afterward. There are also moments when he’ll throw away nearly two decades of experience and throw a no-hope hospital route well short of the sticks on third down and become an accessory to attempted manslaughter.
Roethlisberger’s receivers aren’t blameless. Johnson has dropped more passes (12) than anyone in the NFL — his next-closest competition is Evan Engram, who has nine drops. Smith-Schuster continues to prove he’s more of a WR1b than a true WR1. Eric Ebron remains Eric Ebron.
The run game is an issue as well. The Steelers rank 30th in rushing DVOA thanks, in part, to injuries that have sapped the production of players like James Conner and Anthony McFarland, as well as the fact their running backs may just not be very good. Pittsburgh’s offensive line isn’t clearing much space for them — their 2.1 rush yards before contact is fourth-worst in the NFL — but they also struggle to break free, as shown by a seventh-worst 1.6 yards after contact this fall.
These are all factors in a troubling storm that’s set upon Pittsburgh as the playoffs loom. And if those skies don’t clear up soon, it could sink one of the league’s top defenses.
What about the defense’s recent struggles?
Devin Bush and Bud Dupree tore their ACLs. The offense has done the remaining starters few favors when it comes to field position and time of possession. It may be as simple as that.
Few teams understand the impact of losing a linchpin middle linebacker quite like the Steelers. Losing Ryan Shazier to a career-ending injury destabilized their entire defense in 2017. That Pittsburgh team gave up just 17.8 points and 295 yards per game in a 10-2 start, then allowed 28 and 330 in a 3-2 finish that ended in a Divisional Round loss to the Jaguars. A top-five defense became a top 15 group and the team missed the postseason the following season.
The club made efforts to replace the presence Shazier brought to the center of the defense in the intervening years. Bush was the 10th overall pick of the 2019 draft. MInkah Fitzpatrick came in from the Dolphins in exchange for a first-round pick later that year. Both made immediate impacts adding range, sure-handed tackling, and solid coverage that allowed the rest of the team’s top-tier defenders to thrive without having to worry about the middle of the field. Pittsburgh’s defense has consistently graded out as a top-three unit throughout the 2020 season.
Losing Bush in Week 6 looked like an obstacle the Steelers could overcome. The team actually saw its points allowed drop from 19 per game to 16 over the seven games that followed. That was promising, but it was also the function of a soft schedule against lower-tier offenses like the Jaguars, Cowboys, and Bengals. Dupree joined the injured list in Week 12’s win over the Ravens. Cracks that withstood the limited force of bad offenses started to buckle under the weight of mounting losses.
The Steelers gave up just 46 points between Weeks 9 and 12. They’ve given up 76 in the three-game losing streak that’s dropped them to 11-3. 32 of those points came after turnovers that set their opponents up in plus field position. The defense was on the field longer than the offense in all three of those games, including a 35/25 disparity in Week 14’s loss to the Bills.
In short, Pittsburgh’s myriad offensive mistakes are putting its defense in bad spots. Although that group has the chops to recover from many of them, it was never going to bat 1.000 in these situations. Being without a dynamic do-it-all middle linebacker and the pass rushing cantilever to T.J. Watt’s Defensive Player of the Year campaign has begun to take its toll. While the the Steelers have soldiered on reasonably without two key contributors, it can only do so much when forced to stop a team — even the Ryan Finley Bengals — who gets to start three different drives inside the Steelers 40-yard line. — CD
Week 16 picks
Quick note: Due to Christmas Eve and Christmas, we’re only sending out two newsletters this week. As consolation, we’re publishing our entire picks panel two days earlier than usual. Happy holidays!
The NFL has gifted us with four straight days of football for this yuletide season — and this time, it’s not because Covid concerns forced a game to get rescheduled, yay!
Something that has been rescheduled for many of us is our holiday plans. Because I can’t visit my mom this Christmas like I would in normal times, I’ve virtually invited her to be our guest picker this week. My mom is much more of a college football fan, but she is at least somewhat aware of what’s happening in the NFL.
Although she does not have a favorite NFL team, she is a well-wisher of the Browns, Bengals, and Lions. Why the three saddest franchises in the NFL? Does she have that much empathy for Charlie Brown every time he tries and fails to kick a football? Well, my mom was born and raised in Ohio, and has lived most of her adult life in Michigan, which means about 85 percent of the people she knows are tortured fans of one of those three Super Bowl-less teams. I think she just wants her friends and loved ones to be happy, though I would completely understand if she’s also tired of hearing their laments.
Despite my mom’s best hopes, she only thinks two of those teams, the Bengals and Browns, will win this week. As she told me, “my heart says Lions, but the ‘L’ in Lions stands for Losers,” and I’m going to assume the second part is a meme a friend of hers posted on Facebook (I won’t verify that feeling by doing any research, in accordance with the Facebook Standard). Elsewhere, she took the Ravens and Cowboys because each has an Ohio State running back, and I also discovered she does NOT like the Steelers or Patriots and refused to pick them:
These were not easy games to decide on, but I’m proud of my mom for giving it a shot. And if she ends up with a better Week 16 record than the rest of us, I’ll never hear the end of it! — SH
The “Maybe I’d pick differently if this were a playoff matchup” game: Vikings vs. Saints
In the last decade, no team has suffered such consistent playoff heartbreak as the Saints. Two of the last three times, it was the Vikings who delivered the fatal blow. Good thing for the Saints that this is still the regular season then, huh?
The New Orleans offense struggled to get going in Drew Brees’ return last week, but the Saints kept it close against the Chiefs. Their defense gave Patrick Mahomes some trouble and is still playing at an elite level. As long as they’re not too worn out, they can handle the Vikings, who went just 4 of 13 on third and fourth downs against the Bears. Brees, even without Michael Thomas, has enough weapons that the rust should wear off sooner rather than later.
With a win, the Saints can clinch the division and stay alive in the race for the No. 1 seed. They can also officially eliminate Minnesota from postseason contention, which will probably be a nice Christmas present for all the Who Dat fans out there who are still holding a grudge against the Vikings for ruining their past Super Bowl hopes. — SH
The “Go with your gut” game: Titans vs. Packers
To be honest, there were at least five other matchups this week in which my gut was the deciding factor. This was just the most gut game of them all.
Both teams are sitting at double-digit wins and are fairly evenly matched. The Packers have Football Outsiders’ second-ranked offense; the Titans are third. Aaron Rodgers should be able to exploit the Titans’ flimsy secondary; Derrick Henry can do the same to the Packers’ run defense.
If your gut is telling you the Packers, on Sunday Night Football at Lambeau Field, I get it. But mine is making me picture Green Bay defenders shattering like glass in the 20-degree weather while Henry runs through them. So I’m giving the edge to the Titans. — SH
Alright, CD. So if we're so low on Big Ben, why are we picking PIT over IND?