Through the first six weeks of the season, the Steelers' offense had struggled far too much with play-action. Without it, the passing game has yet to be productive on a consistent basis. With Mike Tomlin opting to go to Russell Wilson at quarterback in their 37-15 win over the Jets, the play-action game was an actual strength.
Now, Wilson's made a name for himself in a number of ways, and his success out of play-action is one of them. So, when the Steelers produce 157 yards through the air on play-action when the previous six weeks produced just 235 yards, the natural inclination is to think it was all the quarterback.
Tomlin doesn't think so.
"Play-action is only effective if you got a commitment and an effective running game," Tomlin said during his Tuesday press conference at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex. "Sometimes it's just not always him. You guys are pulling from a very small sample size. It might just be how the New York Jets chose to play defense. They play a lot of man-to-man. We lined up in some bunches and did some play-action passes, and like Calvin [Austin III] came free late. And so sometimes it's not about us, to be quite honest with you, particularly if you're just talking about a small sample size, you can write a story on a collection of plays, but it's not necessarily reality. And I think anything in terms of analysis of Russ regarding our play pass relative to other games, the answers might just lie in the fact that it's a small sample size versus one opponent."
So, let's watch all of Wilson's dropbacks out of play-action and see what the film tells us:
As you can see from the film, credit goes around to several people. Wilson is certainly one of them, but Arthur Smith called a good game. And, some of the play designs were meant to exploit the Jets' tendency to run man coverage. The play Tomlin mentioned about Austin getting open, that's just a beautifully designed play that manipulated man coverage.
Either way, regardless of who deserves credit, here are Wilson's numbers out of play-action in this game, according to FantasyPoints.com:
• Stat line: 9 of 13, 157 yards, 69.2 completion percentage, 0 TD, 0 INT
• Passer rating: 110.1
• Yards per attempt: 12.1
• Average depth of target (ADoT): 6.6 yards
• First-read percentage: 84.6%
• Check-down percentage: N/A (no check downs)
• Pressure percentage: 28.6%
• Sacks avoided: 0
For reference, this is what Justin Fields did through the first six weeks (with rankings among 33 quarterbacks):
• Passer rating: 75.9 (31st)
• ADoT: 5.0 yards (T-27th)
• First-read percentage: 47.8% (dead last)
• Check-down percentage: 34.8% (1st)
• Pressure percentage: 46.8% (3rd)
• Sacks avoided: 4 (T-3rd)
Tomlin stressed that this was just a one-game sample size. And maybe he wants more out of play-action. And, as we saw with a couple of plays, there are better plays to be made. It was better, but it wasn't perfect.
However, it was drastically better than what we had seen over the first six weeks of the season, which means next week's game against the Giants becomes intriguing for yet another reason. It's not just about winning that game and improving to 6-2 by the bye week. It's about establishing a winning formula on offense.
Play-action has to be part of that. This was a good first step. And if Wilson is the quarterback that can best get the job done, then he's the guy.
