AFF Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 If they lose Pouncey, they’ll sign a stopgap vet. Id be amazed if they didn’t draft a rd1 or rd2 center in that scenario. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MOSteelers56 Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 I think Dickerson is going to go later than imagined. In his 5 year college career he's had 4 season ending injuries. Knee, ankle, ankle, knee. Those are rough to come back from. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CKSteeler Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 It's funny to me that we just witnessed a game where a 43 year old Brady threw three interceptions, but because his defense held up/Aaron Rodgers choked, the storyline is about his continued greatness. Meanwhile, Steelers fans can't throw Ben under the bus fast enough. There's a lot of fans who have very little loyalty to the guy because of what amounts to a narrative than anything that has to do with his play. The slightest sign of a downturn and they can't wait to jettison him. That's my take on that. Physically, he can still do just about everything you'd ask. His arm is not shot. He isn't Drew Brees let alone Petyon at the end of his career. His deep ball issues are not the result of not having the arm talent. He can still move well enough when he has to and escapes the occasional sack when the offense isn't designed for him to ditch the ball in 2 seconds flat. Let's address a few of the narratives specifically from 2020: 1. He won't run play action. The team has had a declining rate of play action in the offense since Todd Haley arrived. They had Leveon Bell and were a legitimate threat to run the ball and they barely used play action. Ben wasn't even under center in 2019 and the team didn't use play action. Was that Ben on the sidelines dictating to the OC what offense Mason Rudolph and Duck Hodges should run? 2. He won't go under center First, this is a league wide trend. There are some offenses that break this mold, but the Steelers don't have a coordinator running that sort of offense and haven't since Arians left. Ben has legitimately stated he prefers the shotgun, but once again in 2019 Ben wasn't the QB and the team still predominantly used the shotgun. He wasn't out there in week 17 and we didn't see some great creative run game unleashed from these under-center formations. The team has been built to pass first since Todd Haley arrived. The OL they draft and groom are not maulers. Dotson is the first selection where you say to yourself this guy is a road grader. Maybe things change here, but even when Munchack and Bell were here this was a pass first offense. The pass, mostly out of the shotgun, opened up running lanes with few exceptions. What changed last year, compared to other Ben-QB'ed years was that the deep ball went away. Not even just that Ben struggled with it, but the team just basically scrapped the vertical passing attack from the offense for large stretches at a time. Like they forgot you are allowed to run routes more than 5 yards down the field. Teams were able to clog these short throwing lanes and play the run at the same time. The OL play also declined greatly due to age and probably coaching. 3. Ben is greedy! This is my favorite. He's set to make $19 million or whatever next year. Not chump change, but that's not even Kirk Cousins money. Ben has FU money. He could walk away from the game and be just fine financially. Frankly, he could still probably command $35 million next year if he were to be a FA as so many Steelers fans hope for and he wouldn't be stuck with coach Aviators anymore. 4. Ben has too much control over the organization! I mean, they stuck him with Todd Haley for years after they fired his best bud Arians. The organization hung him out to dry during the whole Milledgeville debacle. More recently, they fired Fitchner who was supposedly his hand picked OC. The fact that he was also tight with Tomlin's first hire as a head coach goes unnoticed by the same crowd who insist that he was just Ben's guy. Tomlin knew Fitchner longer and brought him to Pittsburgh because of their relationship as college coaches. There's some vague media report about Ben wanting the guys who are free agents back, to include Juju, and people take this as Ben making demands. I mean, that's about as boilerplate a report as you can get. It's not even news as we know Ben likes Juju and if he were publicly asked if he wants any of the FA's back, he'd say sure. This goes back to what I said above. There's a narrative around the guy and some people just never liked him. It has more to do with them than anything Ben has actually ever done. His playoff performances haven't been anywhere close to good enough, but the defense was absolutely pathetic in the last two games turnovers or no turnovers. And if a single injury to a guy not named Watt is enough of an excuse for people to overlook that, I don't know what to say. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
warfelg Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 Steelers: 77% snaps out of shotgun. League average: 62% snaps out of shotgun. Teams with a higher rate: Baltimore, Kansas City, Arizona, Houston. Care to tell me what those 4 teams have in common? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CKSteeler Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 That's great, Warfelg. What was the Steelers percentage of snaps from shotgun in 2019, though? Probably not, because it undercuts the whole argument that this is being driven by Ben alone because the Steelers ran 76% percent of their plays out of shotgun when he wasn't even on the field for but a game and a half. That put them behind offenses like SF, Tampa Bay, and Tennessee (that must have really killed their downhill run game, huh?). And according to this site, the league average in 2020 was 65% under shotgun. So, yea, league wide trend and that includes teams that don't make their QB running the ball a focal point. But until you have an explanation for 2019, you'll have to dig a bit deeper for answers than just "Fat Ben doesn't want to drop back before passing." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dcash4 Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 7 minutes ago, CKSteeler said: "Fat Ben doesn't want to drop back before passing." This isn’t Wars point. I don’t fully agree with Wars point, but it’s not about drop back passing. All four of those teams have highly capable mobile quarterbacks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CKSteeler Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 2 minutes ago, Dcash4 said: This isn’t Wars point. I don’t fully agree with Wars point, but it’s not about drop back passing. All four of those teams have highly capable mobile quarterbacks. And those actually aren't the only sorts of teams with high shotgun rates. A cursory look at the numbers will prove that. I also like how you don't point out that Warfelg actually ignored the central point of my argument. You know, the whole bolded part about 2019 which strongly indicates that this was in fact just Fitchner's offense and not just a product of what the QB wanted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
warfelg Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 10 minutes ago, Dcash4 said: This isn’t Wars point. I don’t fully agree with Wars point, but it’s not about drop back passing. All four of those teams have highly capable mobile quarterbacks. Pretty much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dcash4 Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 Go do the top 10 rushing attempts by QB and then do the top 10 shotgun rates by team. See which team sticks out as the oddball. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CKSteeler Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 And War's point is, as already stated, actually irrelevant to the argument I made unless his entire solution is that the team needs a mobile QB. I think he's just choosing to selectively use stats and intentionally ignoring my argument because he has no answer for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
warfelg Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 Also out shotgun rate in 2020 went up to 83% with only Arizona and Baltimore running it more. And 2018 was 79% T-2 in the NFL behind KC. So use of shotgun was actually DOWN comparatively in 2019. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CKSteeler Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 Just now, warfelg said: Also out shotgun rate in 2020 went up to 83% with only Arizona and Baltimore running it more. And 2018 was 79% T-2 in the NFL behind KC. So use of shotgun was actually DOWN comparatively in 2019. Yes...by a whopping 2%. If your response is that the team ran a different offense in 2019, that's just a laughable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
warfelg Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 1 minute ago, Dcash4 said: Go do the top 10 rushing attempts by QB and then do the top 10 shotgun rates by team. See which team sticks out as the oddball. This is the conversation I was trying to drive. The Steelers rate of shot gun usage and QB rushing attempts and yards stick out like a sore thumb. Almost like the teams that have high usage of shotgun are using it with a point and we aren't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CKSteeler Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 2 minutes ago, warfelg said: This is the conversation I was trying to drive. The Steelers rate of shot gun usage and QB rushing attempts and yards stick out like a sore thumb. Almost like the teams that have high usage of shotgun are using it with a point and we aren't. I find it funny that I can't get an answer to a simple question. If Ben is the only reason for the shotgun, why did the team continue to run it so heavily in 2019? The only actual answer that makes sense is because that was Fitchner's offense. It's the offensive coordinator wanted, as well. And again, this is cherry picking the data. A team like NE runs shotgun 69% of the time in 2019. Above league average. A team like SF with Garoppolo ran it more than the Steelers and hardly featured a true rushing threat at QB. To claim it's only Pittsburgh is simply untrue and anyone can look at the chart and see that for themselves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
warfelg Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 Why continue to run it so much in 2019? Because your playbook is designed with QB1 in mind and you hope to have a QB2 that can run with that playbook design. Do you know how hard it is to completely re-write the playbook in season and get everyone on page with operating an offense that's different you just spent an entire offseason installing? The issue is that the thinking is far to linier of "still high in '19 so must not be Ben!" The truth is the fact that it took a 2% dip followed by a 6% increase is rather significant. NE actually ran shotgun only 50% of the time in 2019, it was Miami that was in shotgun 69% of the time, which was 12 in the league in 2019. You want to say maybe it's just Fitchner? 2017 - 5th highest percent, 71%, OC - Todd Haley 2016 - 12th highest percent, 66%, OC - Todd Haley So we were trending in a direction of using more and more shotgun formation from before Fitchner anyways, and that definitely was not part of Todd Haley's offense, as his was more run and gun from under center. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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