By Mike Tanier
September 23, 2013
The Steelers’ offense is broken. The team has 9 turnovers and 10 sacks through three games.They average just 3.0 yards per rush, have scored just three 1st-quarter points (not counting that silly Titans safety), and have controlled the clock for only 26 minutes-and-change per game.
Can the Steelers’ offense be fixed? We cannot miraculously repair Maurkice Pouncey’s knee or bring Mike Wallace back, and the team isn’t going to find an Orlando Pace on the waiver wire. But there are small things that the Steelers can do to make life easier and move the ball better. Here are six ways to repair the offense. These patches won’t result in 38 points per game, but they can keep matters from getting worse.
1) Storm the Fumble Bastille and release the prisoners! Felix Jones fumbled after getting walloped by two tacklers on Sunday night, and Mike Tomlin and Todd Haley responded with their usual measured reserve. They stuffed Jones into the trunk of an old Chevy Impala and pushed the car into the Alleghany River. Actually, they needed Jones to return kickoffs, so they just benched him on offense for the remainder of the Bears game, though it was clear that they were thinking of doing that other thing.
The problem is that Jones was running well before the fumble, while Jonathan Dwyer started getting dragged down easily after two decent carries. The Steelers don’t have enough quality running backs for Tomlin to lock them in the doggie crate after every fumble. They need to be able to mix-and-match depending on the situation. The “fumble punishment” accomplishes nothing; it just leaves the Steelers shorthanded at one of their weakest positions. Tomlin and Haley should have learned this from last November’s loss to the Browns, when so many running backs fumbled that Chris Rainey (who was so flighty and troubled that he is now out of the NFL) got significant carries in a close game.
Steelers running backs are professionals. They don’t need time in the Thinking Chair to know they are not supposed to fumble. The players are not the ones who need to learn a lesson here.
2) Heath Miller’s return is a big help. Miller is still working his way back from an knee injury. He played 39 snaps and caught three passes on Sunday, and he will probably be eased back into the lineup over the next month or so. The quicker the Steelers can get Miller fully integrated, the better.
Miller is much more than an over-the-middle weapon, although Ben Roethlisberger needs him to be such a weapon. Miller made an impact as a blocker on Sunday night. He sealed the edge so Dwyer could gain 11 yards on one carry (11 yards is a big deal for the Steelers running game right now), and blocked Julius Peppers on one of Roethlisberger’s deep passes to Antonio Brown. Miller can protect the Steelers’ overmatched tackles, and he represents a massive upgrade from David Paulson and David Johnson, who platooned at tight end in Johnson’s absence.
Because their pass protection is poor and their receiver corps is thin, the Steelers need to be able to get Miller, Johnson & Johnson (tight end David and fullback Will), and their backs fully involved in the passing game as both targets and pass protectors. Miller allows the Steelers to go “heavy” while still having a viable downfield target among the big guys. He makes them less predictable, which can only help.
3) Le’Veon Bell’s return will help more. Bell is back at practice, and he represents a major talent upgrade over Dwyer, Jones, and Isaac Redman. At the same time, he is a rookie, so do not expect a cure-all. Rookies tend to fumble (see Item 1), and Bell had exactly four preseason carries, so it will take him a while to get up to full speed.
Bell’s return works hand-in-hand with the next item.
4) Revisit the zone blocking game. The Steelers worked hard on zone blocking all through the offseason. Then, Maurkice Pouncey got hurt early in the first game, and they threw months of preparation out the window. The Steelers have only executed a handful of inside and outside zone plays all season. That’s a big problem, because zone blocking requires patience and repetition, and the Steelers know it: players and coaches stressed the importance of “sticking with zone blocking” over and over during my visit to their training camp. It was shocking to see them abandon it at the first sign of trouble.
None of the current Steelers running backs are traditional zone rushers, though too much can be made of the distinction: Redman and Dwyer spent the whole offseason working on it, and it’s not like neither is capable of cutting back once in a while. Bell ran behind a zone-blocking line in college and has both the experience and the skillset to make the scheme work. Pouncey’s absence hurts, but Pouncey’s absence hurts no matter what. At least everyone else in the running game will be doing what they spent six months studying and practicing.
5) Embrace the pump fake. Roethlisberger is the best pump-faker in the NFL, and one thing the Steelers did very well on Sunday was use the pump fake to exploit the Bears defensive aggressiveness. Roethlisberger pump-faked before handoffs, and it froze backside defenders to make life easier for the poor Steelers blockers. He pump-faked right to move the safeties before throwing deep to the left.
The figure below shows another way the Steelers used the pump-fake on Sunday: to exploit both their own and their opponent’s tendencies. Haley loves the wide receiver screen, and the Bears love to play Cover-2. When the Steelers line up in a trips left formation, the Bears remain in a Cover-2 shell, knowing they can slide defenders into zones to stop Miller (83) and Jerricho Cotchery (89).
The play starts as a screen to Emmanuel Sanders (88), with Cotchery preparing to block Sanders’ cornerback. The Bears know the Steelers and other teams will attack them with this strategy, and their underneath defenders prepare to take on blockers and stop Sanders. But it is all a ruse, Cotchery wheels upfield instead of blocking, and after a convincing pump-fake, Roethlisberger hits his uncovered receiver for a 22-yard gain.
Pump-fakes yield diminishing returns. After a while, defenses stop biting on them. That can also be a good thing for the Steelers: it will slow defensive aggressiveness, opening up the screens and other passes that Roethlisberger spent Sunday night faking. The Steelers need this kind of misdirection engineering because secondary weapons like Cotchery cannot win most one-on-one matchups, and the offensive line needs a tentative defense to be successful. The Steelers need creativity and misdirection, because they cannot win with size and speed right now.
6) Get everyone on the same page, or else. Antonio Brown’s sideline spat with Haley last week was a bad sign: Haley is known for his personality clashes, and the Steelers have too many problems to add player-coach squabbles to the list. The return of the Fumble Gulag is a bad sign, because it shows that the coaches have not evolved from last season. The abandonment of the zone scheme is a bad sign, because it points to impatience and a lack of planning. The whole “take away the ping pong privileges in the clubhouse” speaks to a team having a hard time acting like adults, or a coaching staff having a hard time treating the players like adults, or some combination of both.
Those are a lot of bad signs, and many of them point to a coaching staff that appears to be flailing. Repairing the Steelers offense will take time and commitment, but Tomlin and Haley have shown an alarming tendency to bail on a player or strategy at the first sign of trouble. That’s the opposite of the Steelers’ legendary slow-and-steady approach. Tomlin and Haley must commit to starters and a scheme, then spend the next few weeks or months following through. It may not get them to the playoffs this year, but it can get them back on firm footing. Changing running backs and personalities every few series sure isn’t working.
(Note: the ping pong incident was a player-on-player situation, but Haley finds himself in the middle of these weird “games in the locker room” stories. Remember the Chiefs and their beanbag toss? Bottom line: if the Steelers are worried about the distraction of ping pong, they are miles from worrying about the right things).
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