Throwing over the middle of the field

LoL. Exactly.

 

Obligatory...

 

Tell me how many SB do they both have, I can't remember??
Oh wait somehow playoff wins are more important than SBs, even though you can have a playoff win every single year for the rest of the history of the NFL, and still not make ,or win a SB, but please do go on

 

Yep.

There was a significant change from Wilson to Rodgers.

With Kenny we seem to have avoided the mof in the first half of games, but thrown there in the 2nd half (I posted a link to a depot article in one of these recent threads). Clearly the plan was to keep games close by not losing them early. Then try to win late. Which worked...probably better than it should have with Kenny. Who seems like a good kid, but not an especially good NFL QB.

 

12-5 > 8-12

 

Only 2 teams make the super bowl per year and sometimes the teams who lose the conference title game is better that the teams who win the other conference,like last season.The rams were better that the patriots,just ask to the seahawks

It don't change the fact that the rams have been a contender way more often lately and when they lose,they gave a good fight against a great team,like the last 3 seasons.The steelers have been down by 21 points or more in each of the last 7 playoffs game,bt far a NFL record

Maybe this is hard for you to see the difference!

 

Exactly what I just said. It appears you don't read what I write since thats the 3rd time today you have shown what I already said.
Now do you realize that a SB is way more important than a playoff win??
Do you realize that you can win a playoff game every single year until the world ends, and never make a SB??
What do you think Josh Allen rather have, a playoff win every year like he has had or a SB appearances like he hasn't??

 

Have to win a playoff game to get to the Super Bowl. Last time I checked.

 

I don't think this is just a Kenny Pickett thing,since they avoid the middle of the field very often,unless they have the back against the wall even with other QB...They were too safe in the first half on offense

 

Oh really.
Holy sheep $hit , Im glad you told me that, because after watching all these years I didn't know that.
Do You know you can win a playoff game every single year until the sun burns out, and never make the SB.
That in a thinking man's brain would tell you why making a SB is way more important than winning a playoff game, but I digress, we know you let other think for you

 

I couldn't find a passing chart for Stafford for 2025.

But here's a link to an X post from PFF showing locations of his pass attempts as of Nov 14.
https://x.com/PFF/status/1989468559756644623

Total passes to this point (19+12+16+21+30+18+27+75+46) = 265

If we look between the numbers at 10+ and 20+ yards, that's 42 passes (15.8%).

We don't have the same breakdown with Rodgers, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's a similar number. I'm not about to count all the circles though.

 

No **** really???
Although you can win a playoff game every year, and never reach a SB, so your little record you show means nothing, but a cherry picked stat since they have both been to, and won the exact same amount of SBs.

 

I don't have the data for the splits with other QBs, only the post I saw before...which were specifically about Kenny's 1st and 2nd half splits for the first half of the season or whatever the time frame was.

My guess is that this was less true with Rodgers last year. I think that Rodgers (like Ben) wouldn't really follow an instruction not to throw it over the middle.

I think it was also less true with Mitch...which led to many of the picks he threw. Especially in his first stint as a starter, where he seemed to be really trying hard to get a highlight reel play or two before the rookie 1st round pick took the job. Unfortunately with Mitch, those highlights were usually for the other team.

And I think one of the things that people mentioned when Mason forced Kenny to the bench was "wow...Mason throws over the middle". I remember reading that was people's impressions, but don't know if it was true or not. I think it was more that "Mason is giving us at least average QB play, which we haven't seen for years on this team". Before the monsoon game in Baltimore anyway...

I know we've had this conversation before...but I think (especially in the Kenny/Canada era) we were forced into being safe early because the offense was so bad at scoring points that we had little chance of coming back from negative plays. If Kenny went somewhere else and played well, I think this would have helped invalidate how the team played with him. But he's been outplayed (or played to a draw) by the QB3 on every team he's been on in the NFL.

Here's the Kenny 1st half vs. 2nd half splits through 9 games in 2023.


Early downs vs. late downs (notice that he didn't complete many of the attempts between the numbers 5+ yards down field...small sample though).



Here's Kenny vs. Mitch in 2022 through week 11


Different than i thought. To my eye, it looks like Kenny threw between the numbers at least as much at Mitch. But I think Kenny has more attempts here too (again by my eye).

Here's Fields vs. Wilson in 2024 through week 7. Not many passes for Wilson yet. We can see that Fields was throwing over the middle too. ETA: I know that switching QBs around frequently is kind of frowned upon in the NFL, but I think we should have gone back to Fields in the last couple regular season games and the playoffs. Wilson didn't look good at that point IMO.

 

I tried telling them this.
I said find me one chart for the whole season showing any team throwing in the middle past 10 yards more than outside.
You know the sad fact of all this??
We can spend all day showing facts, and tomorrow someone will get into their feelings, and say it all again.
I've been doing this for years on this board. You come to realize that they either....
1. Don't know what they are looking at.
2. Don't care about actual facts, or .....
3. Are just trying to troll

 

McVay has been to 3 conference championships since Tomlin was owned by Belichick in January 2017 AFC Championship.

Cowher was always competitive in conference championship games. The games went down to the wire.

 

Cognitive dissonance is a real thing. I'm sure that I suffer from it at times too.

 

Cowher and McVay are also good coaches.

 

... who are better than Tomlin.

 

I think they're probably all in the same tier.

Harder to say with McVay (who could end up the best of a good bunch here)...we'll have to see what happens the rest of his career. He's been good when he has a very good QB. But I think it hurts him that he basically gave up on trying to develop a guy (who turned out to be pretty good where he got traded). My guess is that our offense with the BBB's would have looked better with McVay than it did with Tomlin. And that we would have been worse post-2019 with McVay.

I think he has the potential to be better than both Cowher and Tomlin (which I didn't think when he lost to the Pats in the SB because they couldn't score). It will be interesting to see what happens post-Stafford. Will he jump ship like Payton did after losing Brees to try to hand-pick the best landing spot? Or will he stay and try to rebuild like Billy B and Tomlin did? Will he be able to develop his own QB? He's had a good stretch so far. If he can duplicate this with another QB...especially staying with the same franchise, then I think he'll end up being better than both of them.

Cowher and Tomlin are basically the same coach IMO. I think it's fair to say either was better than the other. But the margin isn't large.

 

As I said somewhere else, it's good to compare with the rest of the league to get some perspective on 'too little' or 'too much'.

Here's six years of data by team (multiple QBs, multiple OCs obviously). While @HeinzMustard might be exaggerating he's not all that far off:

(charted in order of decreasing MOF passing %; orange line = NFL avg)



Relative to the rest of the league the Steelers haven't been using the MOF as much. Of the 3 to 4,000 or so passes thrown in that timeframe your still talking about hundreds of MOF passes... er, a sh__t ton.

 

Tomlins offense was bad. Those charts tell me what i know. We excelled at behind the line of scrimmage completions and short of the sticks passes.

28 minutes of TOP is revealing.

Bye bye vanilla. Anything this new staff puts on the field is better than the JV crap we've endured the last several years.

 

The BLOS passes don't bother me as much. You can make an offense like that work if you have the right personnel. Mahomes has typically been top 5 in BLOS pass attempts in the last five years or so. They've been to a few SBs with that kind of offense.

 

I hated the bubble screens during the Killer B/Haley era... but Ben threw to the middle of the field quite a bit. It helped that we had an All Pro WR and RB on the roster at the time.