If the Steelers are to resurrect their offense in 2020, they will need a balanced attack that doesn't rely on Ben Roethlisberger returning from injury at 38 years old to sling the ball for 5,000 yards like he did in 2018. It will require a sturdy run game that can win on its own and be relied upon to beat defenses that focus on stopping the passing game.
That means the Steelers need the running backs need to be playmakers. James Conner and Benny Snell were the team's top two running backs and they didn't even combine for 1,000 rushing yards in 2019. Part of that has come from their lack of winning one-on-one situations with defenders in space.
That has to change.
Conner was impressive in 2018 when he averaged a broken tackle for every 10.8 carries, the 13th-best rate in the NFL. But one of my major concerns for 2019 was whether that could continue when defenses got to Conner earlier on running plays and didn't let him build momentum.
Conner benefited from being mostly and unknown factor for the Steelers in 2018 as teams focused on stopping Roethlisberger, Antonio Brown and JuJu Smith-Schuster. But when teams focused more on Conner in 2019, his rate of broken tackles dipped significantly to one for every 23.2 carries.
This wasn't because of some dip in play from Conner. This was because teams concentrated on stopping the Steelers' run game more, especially with Mason Rudolph and Devlin Hodges being the quarterbacks for most of the year.
As badly as Conner dipped in 2019, Jaylen Samuels was the worst of the group at making defenders miss. He only had three broken tackles on the season, a major reason why Snell and Conner got more work over him. Teams wouldn't need to line up more players in the box, but they would fly to the line and look to catch Samuels before picked up momentum.
Watch how Samuels gets stopped by the Rams' cornerback, Troy Hill, after the Steelers' line gives him a 1-on-1 shot:
Samuels getting those opportunities in space, plain and simple, has to result in more victories. Any time Randy Fichtner draws up a run play where a running back gets a chance to beat a cornerback, it should yield a better result.
The Steelers' running backs generally do a good job of making defenders miss once they've picked up momentum and encounter a defender in space. Here's an example of Snell doing that to Bradley McDougald of the Seahawks. Notice how Snell gets a clean hole and doesn't have to worry about making a move until he's more than ten yards downfield:
Moves like that are good, but he has to make more players miss in the hole and around the box. Defenses won't always be blocked so well that he can be untouched for that much space.
Snell had the most successful rate of breaking tackles on the Steelers, averaging one for every 15.4 carries, good enough for 27th in the NFL. But there were still plenty of times when Snell was put in a favorable matchup and lost. Watch how he gets isolated with safety Jessie Bates III for the Bengals in space and loses.
Bates was the last line of defense and Snell would've had a big gain if he either makes Bates miss or stiff arms his low diving tackle. But neither happen and the play is snuffed:
Beating larger defensive linemen in the hole can prove difficult, but running backs should do much better against defensive backs. These are the matchups that if won during games, could provide a big boost to help a struggling offense.
Watch how Conner gets stuffed in the hole by cornerback Taron Johnson. James Washington was unable to get to Johnson because of alignment, but if there was one defender for Conner to face lined up in that spot, Fichtner wouldn't want it to be lineman Vincent Taylor or linebackers Tremaine Edmunds and Jerry Hughes, he'd want it to be Johnson.
Conner never gets his momentum going and can't break the tackle:
Having Roosevelt Nix back next season would be a huge boost for Conner so that he could have the time to pick up steam for his best runs. That's where he had the most success in 2018 and where the majority of his best moves came in 2019. Watch how good he looks once he picks up momentum against Micah Hyde later in that game:
Conner has the skills to be a good NFL running back. But he hasn't been able to do what Le'Veon Bell did for the Steelers in making several players miss in the hole regularly to gain extra yards. If that doesn't become his or Snell's forte in 2020, the Steelers may need to find a player who can do that to balance their offense and give Roethlisberger a reliable weapon that doesn't force his hand in the passing game.
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