The Steelers Offense is Having Historically Bad Starts

The Steelers’ offense is terrible at getting out to fast starts. This is no surprise for anyone who has watched the team in 2023. If you go out and watch the games recently, Pittsburgh is setting some historically bad numbers in the first halves. That’s just based on raw counting stats.

Since their loss to the Texans, the Steelers are averaging just 83 yards of offense in the first half. They are averaging just 5.5 first downs per first half. In those games, they have scored just nine first-half points. Pittsburgh’s offense runs just 25.5 plays on average in the first half over that span. They averaged six drives. Steelers opponents average 37.5 plays over that span with six drives. That is a lot of three and outs.

But there might be one stat that tells it all about how bad the Steelers are in their ‘scripted plays’ portion of games. According to Bryce Rossler of Sports Info Solutions (SIS), Matt Canada’s scripted plays accumulated -.47 EPA/Play this season, which would second in the SIS era to the 2020 Steelers under Randy Fichtner, which put up -.24 EPA/Play. That’s a significant difference even from that. Pittsburgh is not just setting the record in that era; they are shattering it. The era dates back to 2003, so this is over 20 seasons of data that Pittsburgh is crushing.

I have no clue how you fix that. But the offense is pretty broken. That’s the takeaway. When everything goes wrong, it pours. I am not sure there is a reset button for this group this year, despite having enough talent to be a solid offense. But Sunday’s game against the Jaguars is an excellent example of how to ruin early plays.

From a Diontae Johnson drop on the first play of the game to Chuks Okorafor slipping and getting Kenny Pickett sacked to finally the cherry on top, where Johnson clangs a ball off his hands, and Okorafor gets caught holding, it’s not all just Canada. In previous games, he takes on most of the blame. But for this last game, the players could not execute. When that storm comes together as nicely as it has, what you get is a historically dreadful offense.