Steelers Four Downs: Opponents box-ing in James Conner, Benny Snell Jr.

1. Box-ed in

The Pittsburgh Steelers rank among the top 10 in the NFL in rushing yards per game (138.8) and per carry (4.5). They had an individual 100-yard rusher during each of their first three games, the only team in the NFL to be able to claim that.

But by one common measure, opponents seem intent on stopping the Steelers’ rush attack.

According to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats, 36.11% of Benny Snell Jr.’s rushes have occurred while eight defenders were stacked close to the line of scrimmage, the highest rate of qualifying running backs. James Conner has the sixth-highest rate at 25.45%. (The opposing running back last week, the Philadelphia Eagles’ Miles Sanders, faces eight men in the box a league-low 1.61% of the time.

The Steelers’ usage of personnel packages that feature extra offensive lineman could be a factor. The Steelers average 7.5 snaps per game (10.5%) using a “third tackle.” Recently, that’s been Jerald Hawkins. For one snap last week, they went “super jumbo” with Hawkins and Kevin Dotson as bonus tackles in addition to two tight ends.

The bigger personnel packages compel opponents to push more players into “the box” in anticipation of a running play.

2.Ranking rushers

Though the raw numbers tell a positive picture of the Steelers’ running game, the advanced metrics aren’t as kind. Footballoutsiders.com ranks the Steelers as the NFL’s 21st-best rushing attack using their all-encompassing Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) statistic.

Breaking it down individually is even less kind to Snell: Football Outsiders computes that among 85 qualifying backs, only four have been worse than Snell, per their metric called Defense-adjusted Yards Above Replacement (DYAR). Conner ranks 14th.

Next Gen Stats pegs Snell at exactly average (a net 0 rush yards above expected) and ranks Conner eighth at plus-1.1 yard above expected.

3. Bell tolled

Le’Veon Bell’s release by the New York Jets this week advanced a storyline that his career declined precipitously upon leaving Pittsburgh. That’s not entirely true: Bell’s production was trending downward long before his contract dispute with the Steelers. The turning point seems to have been when he suffered torn knee ligaments on a tackle by the Cincinnati Bengals’ Vontaze Burfict midway through the 2015 season.

In the 30 games before that Nov. 1, 2015, game, Bell had 20 carries of 20 or more yards and four carries that went at least 40 yards. But in the 32 games he’s played since, he’s had seven carries of 20-plus yards and one of 40-plus.

Before the injury, Bell averaged 4.3 yards per attempt and 9.1 yards per reception. Since, he’s at 4.0 per carry and 7.7 per reception. Last season, Bell ranked second-to-last among 94 running backs in Football Outsiders’ DYAR. He was fifth in the league in DYAR in both 2015 and ’14.

4. Continuity helps

Through five weeks of the NFL season, no team has deployed fewer players than the Steelers. Last week, Trey Edmunds became their 52nd player used, tied with four other teams for fewest. Their 18 players used on defense is matched as a low by only the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The Bucs have had 45 unique defensive groupings, the Steelers 66; the league median is 126.

The Bucs have used their “starting 11” on an NFL-high 26.97% of their defensive snaps, the Steelers are second at 19.42%. The median for all teams is 5.77%.

The continuity is attributable, in part, to avoiding injury, in part to having a well-established “first team” and in part to choosing to deploy a relatively low number of schematic packages.