The Pittsburgh Steelers: A Team Without an Identity

(We have our first reader submission for pic/YouTubage, and it's a winner. R.I.P., Mr. Ironhead.)

I just finished writing up an SCI piece about the Steelers and their newfound penchant for the forward pass. Basically, it's not so new, but everybody here knows that.

Anyway, I'll point you to Eddie B's latest, which pretty much draws all the wrong conclusions from the data. Here are some of my favorite paragraphs:

Sometimes when you are unsuccessful and lose, you look for reasons why," Tomlin said when asked yesterday if he had any regrets about his game plan. "The reality is that our game plan was really kind of no different than what our personality has been all year.

And Tomlin is exactly right. I can say that after going back and looking not only at the Steelers run-pass ratio through six games this season, but I also took a gander at the 2005 postseason. Strikingly (or not so strikingly, if you've been paying attention), the Steelers threw the ball A LOT in the '05 playoffs, especially in the first and second quarters. Whatever, Eddie B read the tea leaves differently:

"We evaluated that [Tomlin said]. Willie Parker had 10 carries for 48 yards at the half. With Seattle, he had 10 or 11 carries for 18 yards. I think the Seattle game was characterized as a great running game because of how we finished, because we won the football game."

The statistics against Seattle, though, tell a different story. The Steelers ran five times and passed five times in the first quarter against the Seahawks.

In the first half, they ran 12 times and tried to pass 15 (including two sacks) on way to a 7-0 halftime lead.

So, against Seattle, the Steelers ran 44.4 percent of the time in the first half; in Denver, it was just 33 percent.

It has been much the same throughout the first halves of their games with their run ratio much higher than it was in Denver. The only other exception came against Buffalo when Roethlisberger passed 29 times with no sacks in the first half and the team ran 15 times.

In the other games, the run-pass split (including sacks) for the Steelers in the first halves is as follows: Arizona 12-14, San Francisco 14-7 and Cleveland 14-17.

Um, except that it hasn't "been much the same throughout the first halves of their games with the run ratio much higher than it was in Denver." According to my maths skillz, here's the first-quarter run-pass breakdown through the first five games:

      RUSH  PASS  %RUSH
CLE    4     7     0.36
BUF    6     6     0.50
SF     4     3     0.57
ARI    6    10     0.38
SEA    5     5     0.50

And for a better comparison, here's the table I slapped together showing the first four games are the '05 postseason (the last game, is the Sunday night fiasco in Denver):

   QTR   RUSH    PASS      %RUSH  PIT      OPP
CIN 1      5       7        0.42    0       10
   2      6       9        0.40   14       17
   3      7       4        0.64   28       17
   4     12       3        0.80   31       17

IND 1      7      13        0.35   14        0
   2      3       8        0.27   14        3
   3     12       4        0.75   21        3
   4     14       3        0.82   21       18

DEN 1      7       8        0.47    3        0
   2      9      10        0.47   21        3
   3     10      10        0.50   21        7
   4      9       4        0.69   34       17

SEA 1      3       6        0.33    0        3
   2      8       8        0.50    7        3
   3      9       7        0.56   14       10
   4     10       3        0.77   21       10

Week 7, 2007 Season
DEN 1      3      10        0.23    7        7
   2      8      14        0.36    7       21
   3      5       2        0.71   14       28
   4      7      14        0.33   28       31

Notice anything? Like, maybe, the Steelers prefer to throw a lot in the first quarter ... and have had some success with it. Odd how nobody complains about it until they start losing.