Soul_Survivor88
Experienced Starter w/First Big Contract
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In the red zone, defenders don’t fear getting beaten deep because there’s no field behind them. To counter this, Steelers offensive coordinator Todd Haley spreads multiple wideouts across the line to give Roethlisberger many short-range options — but against the Chiefs that put pressure on the Steelers pass-catchers to win their one-on-one matchups, and as Matt Chatam explains in this video, their receivers struggled to get open in these short-field situations
Here are some interesting tidbits:
FiveThirtyEight breaks this down in more detail and concludes that the Patriots have a decisive edge in defending the red zone.
Here are some interesting tidbits:
- Despite finishing 7th in yards gained, the Steelers ranked 10th in points scored. In the regular season, the Steelers possessed the football an average of 30 minutes, 22 seconds but scored only 24.9 points per game. Roethlisberger opened up the year completing 65.6% of his passes over the first nine weeks with an 11:0 touchdown-to-interception ratio. His red zone passer rating of 112.1 ranked 6th of all quarterbacks with 10+ red zone attempts as he spread the ball to Brown (6 receptions, 3 touchdowns) and TE Jesse James (5 receptions, 3 touchdowns). Since Pittsburgh’s 10th game, Roethlisberger has completed just 34.4% of his red zone passes, with a 2:3 touchdown-to-interception ratio. His passer rating of 25.0 is the worst of any quarterback in the entire league, and this includes a pair of games against the Cleveland Browns.
- During home games, the Steelers scored TDs in the redzone 56.4 percent of the time. But that dropped to 37 percent when playing on the road. Despite their playoff success is the Steelers haven't scored a touchdown since the third quarter of the wild-card game against the Miami Dolphins on Jan. 8. And that was at the end of a 25-yard scoring drive set up by Ryan Shazier's interception
- Against the Chiefs last week in Kansas City, Pittsburgh's red zone offense was virtually nonexistent. Roethlisberger and the Steelers’ four other offensive Pro Bowlers crossed the Chiefs’ 30-yard line five times and were denied on every one of those drives. Not only did they fail to make big plays in the red zone, they nearly failed to make any plays at all: From inside the Chiefs’ 30, Roethlisberger completed six of 15 passes for just nine yards, converted zero first downs through the air, committed his only turnover and surrendered his only sack.
FiveThirtyEight breaks this down in more detail and concludes that the Patriots have a decisive edge in defending the red zone.
The Pats defense does what the Chiefs do, only better. The Pats “bent” far less than the Chiefs, allowing an average of 42 fewer yards per game. And they “broke” far less often, too, allowing points on a league-low 26.7 percent of drives (the Chiefs rank 10th at 33.5 percent)." Over the regular season, the Chiefs ranked slightly higher in red-zone touchdown defense (fourth, 45.6 percent) than the Patriots (eighth, 51.1 percent). But over each team’s last three regular-season games, the Patriots rank second in the league with a red-zone touchdown allowance rate of just 28.6 percent; that’s one slot higher than Kansas City (third, 30 percent).