We are just going through the Pittsburgh Steelers’ preseason opening win over the New York Giants. As we’ve done for years now, we chart the Steelers’ offense and defense. I do the latter charting and found something very interesting from Friday’s game.
Here’s the short of it: On 32 of 53 snaps versus 11 personnel (3 WR sets) the Steelers remained in their base 3-4 defense. That’s something the defense hasn’t done to that degree under Keith Butler.
In 2015, the Steelers’ regular season defense remained in base versus “passing personnel” (mostly 11 personnel) just 2.6% of the time. There was a small bump last year to 6.4%. And in Game One against the Giants, that number showed a crazy spike up to 60.4%.
That wasn’t just after the starters left. In fact, the opposite. The stats skewed a bit at the end with the Giants in their hurry-up offense and the Steelers stayed in nickel. When the game was early/close, and the starters in, base was the dominant package.
But last year’s minor uptick did seem to indicate a change. And Friday, Butler may have knocked that door down against the Giants. I don’t expect the Steelers to actually play base that often all the time but it’s an idea that makes sense. For three reasons
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