NFL

Analyzing the Playoffs: Biggest Key to the Steelers-Chargers' Game Is the Steelers' Line

Posted Jan 09, 2009 9:03AM By JJ Cooper (RSS feed)

Filed Under: Steelers, AFC North, NFL Playoffs

Text SizeAAA
One of the great things about football is how much there is to analyze. We could debate whether Phillip Rivers or Ben Roethlisberger is a better quarterback, we could argue about whether LaDainian Tomlinson is finished or just a little banged up, or we could discuss how the Chargers will handle the Steelers' zone-blitz scheme.

But if you want to see the easiest barometer to decide whether the Steelers will succeed on Sunday, it can be boiled down to this: if the Steelers can protect Roethlisberger and keep him from being sacked, they should win. If they can't, all bets are off.

The Steelers had 176 offensive drives during the regular season (not counting end of half or end of game drives where the Steelers simply kneeled on the ball). The scored on 62 of them. In other words, when the Steelers got the ball, they had roughly a one-in-three chance of putting points on the board. But if at any point during the drive, Ben Roethlisberger was sacked, their chance of scoring dropped to roughly 1-in-7. Although the sample size is too small to be worth much, it's worth noting that when the Steelers had a sack on a drive, there was a 1-in-20 chance that the opposing team would score on the sack.

OVERALL DRIVE BREAKDOWN
Total Drives 176
Scoring Drives 62
Non-Scoring Drives 114
Non-Scoring Drives With Sack 36
Scoring Drives With Sack 7
Opponents Score On Sack 2
Chance of Scoring 35.23%
Chance of Scoring When Sacked 15.56%
Chance of Scoring, No Sack 41.35%
Chance of Opponent Scoring On Sack 4.44%
Chance of Sack 25.57%
VERSUS PLAYOFF TEAMS
Total Drives 78
Scoring Drives 20
Non-Scoring Drives 58
Non-Scoring Drives With Sack
 24
Scoring Drives With Sack
 2
Chance of Scoring 25.64%
Chance of Scoring, No Sack 23.08%
Chance of Scoring, when Sacked 7.69%
Against playoff teams it was even worse, the Steelers had a one-in-four chance of scoring when they got the ball (which makes sense since playoff defenses are usually tougher), but if Roethlisberger was sacked, that chance of scoring dropped to 1-in-8.

So it's simple. When Pittsburgh protects Roethlisberger (and when the receivers get open and Roethlisberger gets rid of the ball promptly), the Steelers are actually a pretty solid offense. But with a team that allowed the fourth-most sacks in the league (better than only the Bengals, Lions and 49ers), that hasn't happened enough.

After looking at the Steelers offense in multiple ways including crunching the numbers on every Steelers drive of the season, one stat jumps out more than anything else: when the Steelers don't get sacked, Pittsburgh wins. In the Steelers' four losses, Roethlisberger was sacked 20 times (five per game). In Pittsburgh's 12 wins, Roethlisberger and Byron Leftwich were sacked 26 times (three times per game).

Now 24 of Roethlisberger's 46 sacks came on third down, and as you would expect, a third-down sack is almost a sure-fire drive killer. But 15 of Roethlisberger's sacks came on first down, and of those 14 drives (two of those sacks came on one drive), Pittsburgh scored only three times.

I also ran the same type of test on penalties. The Steelers were penalized on 47 of their 176 drives (compared to sacks on 45 drives). But while the sacks led to a significant drop in the Steelers chances of scoring, there wasn't a dramatic difference between the chances of the Steelers scoring in general (35.2 percent chance of scoring), when not penalized (36.4 percent chance of scoring) or when penalized (31.9 percent chance of scoring).

The Steelers normally get somewhere between 10 and 13 drives during a normal game. So when the Steelers get sacked five or more times, it puts a lot of pressure on the defense to keep the score very low.

The same situation came true in the Chargers game: Pittsburgh had nine drives, they scored on three of them. On those three drives, Pittsburgh allowed no sacks. On four of the six non-scoring drives, Roethlisberger went down.

It seems simple, and it is. If Pittsburgh can keep Roethlisberger upright, they should win. If they can't, they will have to rely almost entirely on their defense.

Tags: Ben+Roethlisberger, BenRoethlisberger

Related Articles

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

| 1 | 2 |


NFL Team Photos




Latest NFL Photos