Ben’s Deep-Target Accuracy Took A Hit After Hit To His Knee

[stillers4me]

Sammie Coates was a breakthrough story during the early part of the 2016 season for the Pittsburgh Steelers based on what he did in the first five games, but the headlines for the rest of his campaign were all focused on what he wasn’t doing—which was catching passes, and often, simply playing.


The dividing line between the first portion of his season and the rest was, per common knowledge, a hand injury that he suffered in that fifth game that limited him to sometimes not playing on offense at all, or perhaps just a few snaps. He only got a large number of snaps as the season progressed in a couple of games.


And when he did get snaps—and targets—they overwhelmingly shared a common theme, as over 60 percent of the passes that he faced came with the ball traveling at least 20 yards in the air. As I talked about yesterday, these are generally low-percentage throws as it is, and it played a role in the massive dip in Coates’ reception percentage.


Another factor that played a role in this, I believe, was another injury, this the knee injury suffered by quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. There is a clear disparity in terms of efficiency in his pre-injury targets and his post-injury targets............

read more @ http://www.steelersdepot.com/2017/05...medium=twitter

[Mojouw]

That disparity in deep ball percentages versus the rest of the league is astounding. Personally, I'm all for it. Stressing defenses vertically is really the only way to break things in the NFL right now. Everyone figured out the horizontal thing.

[polamalubeast]

The Steelers had no deep threat last year after week 5.