In their ugly Wednesday night win over the Baltimore Ravens, there weren’t many bright spots for the Pittsburgh Steelers. They scraped by and won 19-14 against a team missing too many key players to count on two hands. At the end of the day, a win is a win and the Steelers are surely happy to be 11-0. One struggle continues to be the running game, though Benny Snell stepped up and made some plays as the featured back in place of James Conner.
Benny Snell Steps Up Against the Ravens
No one will argue that Benny Snell was great in this game with the Ravens, but he provided a steady performance and made some big plays when needed. Through three quarters of the game, Snell ran the ball eight times, with just two of those runs being successful. In the fourth quarter, his runs became more effective, unsurprising given his punishing style of running. He matched his carry total through the first three quarters, finishing the game with 16 rushes. Six of those additional eight carries were successful, bringing his game total to 50%. That’s a respectable successful run rate; it’s nothing crazy but it’s better than the Steelers have been seeing recently.
The biggest problem with the Steelers run game struggles of late has been their blocking. In this game, there were some missed blocks, but there was some really good blocking at times, too. When Snell had any kind of a hole to run in, he found plenty of success. He’s the kind of back who does his best work simply when hitting the hole hard and in a straight line. Pittsburgh ran some of their old school counter plays successfully in the game. Snell behind a pulling guard with green grass in front of them is a site that opposing defenses don’t want to see.
Perhaps the most exciting part of Snell’s performance was his play in the passing game. Last year as a rookie, he was average at best as a pass blocker and wasn’t used at all as a receiver. Wednesday night, he racked up 33 receiving yards on just three receptions. He made plays on little dump of passes, cumulating some YAC in the process. It was great to see him make some tacklers miss in the open field. Snell also had at least one blitz pickup that stood out on the TV tape. Overall, he wasn’t elite in the game, but Benny Snell was good enough.
Playcalling Lacks Confidence in Run Game
Despite Snell’s moderate success in the game, the Steelers coaching staff didn’t seem to have a lot of faith either in him or the run game as a whole. Early in the game the Steelers were 4th and goal from the one yard line. Rather than try to run the ball against a depleted defensive line, they called a pass. Ben Roethlisberger threw an interception in the end zone and the team came away with nothing. Later in the game, Pittsburgh was 3rd and 2 from the Ravens 37 yard line. A dropped pass on third down and an incomplete pass on fourth resulted in a turnover on downs. They had two plays to get two yards, and decided throwing both times would be more successful than running on even one of the two downs.
On the final drive of the game, the Steelers took over up by five points with under three minutes left. Great time to pound the football and run out the clock, right? Wrong. The first three plays were pass plays. They were very luck that Diontae Johnson‘s fumble on the first play of the drive went out of bounds, or they very likely lose the game. Finally, after Roethlisberger connected with James Washington for a third down, the Steelers ran the clock out with Snell. It’s situations like these where you can see how the Steelers don’t trust their run game. When the team consistently throws in short yardage situations, or situations where they need to run the clock out, it’s clear that their run game is leaving some to be desired.
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