Have we allowed one frustrating season and a cultish reverence for "Steeler Football" to cloud our judgment about Steelers Offensive Coordinator Bruce Arians?
Aug 1, 2010 - "That's just Steelers football right there."
Steelers fans have long been subjected to this refrain, delivered breathlessly by commentators, with nostalgia but no sense of context. "Steelers football" refers to a particular strategy that has thrilled the Pittsburgh faithful for decades: pummel your opponent with a suffocating, aggressive defense, then run, run, run.
But the truth is that "Steelers football" is a fragile thing. Failure to meet expectations during any season in Pittsburgh is sure to lead to calls for a 1970s renaissance. And with the Steelers' defensive ineptitude in 2009 quickly explained by unfortunate injuries to stalwarts Aaron Smith and Troy Polamalu, the brunt of offseason criticism has fallen squarely upon the shoulders of the Steelers' rushing offense -- or lack thereof.
Enter Pittsburgh Public Enemy Number One: Offensive Coordinator Bruce Arians. If you spent any time on a Steelers message board last season, you were bound to run into an Arians tirade or two. And why not? Frustration has to be directed somewhere, and watching the Steelers flail through the 2009 season just a year removed from Super Bowl XLIII was nothing if not frustrating.
The charges against Arians are familiar. He passes too much. He's predictable. He refuses to bench Heath Miller or Mike Wallace in favor of a fullback. He won't run enough. The list goes on.
The clamor in the press and on message boards got so loud that even Art Rooney II weighed in, reportedly meeting with Arians and Head Coach Mike Tomlin about a more effective rushing attack. This was not enough for some fans, who responded with exultation to a mistaken report that the meetings had resulted in Arians' termination.
It's no surprise to see fans complain about an underachieving team. What is surprising is the form that those complaints take.
For many fans and commentators, Arians' strategy is troubling because it violates their idea of what Steelers football used to be. Bafflingly, the focus of the conversation is just as much about the Steelers' identity as it is about the effectiveness of Arians' gameplan.
Nostalgia about the franchise's identity pervades editorials and message boards. For instance, one fan on firebrucearians.com, a website unapologetically decorated with a picture of an angry mob at the top, wrote that if you want to watch "[wussy] offense...go watch the Colts. If you want man football, hope the Steelers go back to playing real Steeler football."
After all, what has three years of Arians' supposedly identity-challenging, new-fangled leadership produced? Nothing.
Nothing except two division titles, a 31-17 regular season record, and a Super Bowl ring.
Last year, Bruce Arians' offense was the seventh-best in the NFL, as measured by Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA), a brilliant statistical tool pioneered by our friends at Football Outsiders. That means that the offense moved the ball more effectively on average than Arizona, Houston, Cincinnati, and Baltimore.
The Steelers had two 1,000-yard WRs, a 1,000-yard rusher, and a 4,000-yard passer. For the last two years, the Steelers have ranked fifth in the league in time of possession, meaning they have been doing just fine at running the clock down.
Nevertheless, it is fair to point out that it was not all sunshine and rainbows for Arians' offense last year.
The biggest part of the problem was the unit's inability to convert in short-yardage situations. To put it kindly, the Steelers were terrible at this, but observant fans know this is more a personnel problem than a play-calling one.
Fans are quick to criticize Arians for calling pass plays in short yardage situations, but there is a pretty simple reason he did this: the Steelers were awful when they tried to run.
Mark Kaboly of the McKeesport Daily News has put together a nice article illustrating this problem. The team experienced only a 50% success rate when handing off to one of their running backs on third and short. Numbers like that suggest that the problem was some combination of the running backs and offensive linemen. This deficiency also contributed to a middling third down conversion percentage (17th in the NFL). Arians' willingness to chuck it on these downs seems like a pretty reasonable response to the offense's inability to push the pile in short-yardage play.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against high expectations. However, it's one thing to insist on winning -- it's quite another to insist on winning in a particular way. I simply cannot think of another professional franchise whose fans can so consistently overlook substance in favor of style. Imagine if Penguins fans suddenly resented Sidney Crosby for not playing like a bruiser!
The fact is that even without Santonio Holmes, the Steelers still have players who are better suited for passing than power running. If that violates some pie-in-the-sky idea about how the Steelers are supposed to win, so be it.
Sports teams should not have identities, only strategies. Strategies take personnel into account, identities do not. Strategies vary based on opponents’ strengths and weaknesses, identities do not.
Strategies win, identities - well, you get the idea.
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3d & short yardage
I don’t think Steelers fans care if Arians throws or runs in 3d & short. What fans don’t like is Arians lack of imagination or fore thought. Mostly 3d & short with an empty back field. The short crossing patterns are the only quick outs during an all out blitz. Arians needs another quick out available (RB or TE) when these situations happen. Because the other teams defense knows when the back field is empty they can try to blanket the crossing patterns.
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by steeler junky on Aug 2, 2010 9:24 AM EDT reply actions 1 recs
My complaint about BA is he has no idea when to call some plays
like in Cleveland last year, 3rd & 1 we had just gained 9 yards on two plays what does he call and empty back field shotgun pass play. If our offensive line can’t get us a yard then they don’t need to be playing in the NFL.
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by WVPiratesfan on Aug 2, 2010 1:27 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs
@ WV Piratesfan: Yes, well unfortunately our offense couldn’t get us that yard last year, forcing Arians to experiment a lot in short yardage situations. Here’s to hoping that Pouncey ends up changing that somehow. :)
@Steeler Junky: I agree with you most of the time. I hope we will see less of that as Rashard’s pass catching improves. The only time I like that strategy is in cases where our depth at WR could overwhelm a team thin on CBs. If it creates a matchup problem, then I guess I could go for it.
by Sam Wilmoth on Aug 2, 2010 10:01 PM EDT reply actions
Bruce Arians is an idiot
There are many fans who want to see us run the ball and stop the run like it’s 1975. If you’d like to, you can criticize those fans for wanting an identity more than winning. I’m not really sure there’s anything wrong with their viewpoint, I just don’t feel the same way. Fans having an inefficient plan for winning, however, doesn’t actually say anything about Arians, though. From my viewpoint, he has grossly mismanaged a very talented offense for 3 years, providing no leadership or direction while making lackluster playcalls. The calls for his head started in 2007 when the offense was in the middle of a statistically good season. I’ve seen and written too much over the past 3 years to revisit all the reasons Bruce Arians should be fired, but here are a few samples:
- Run for 5 yards, run for 4 yards. 3rd and 1. Everyone is thinking run. Arians does the absolute dumbassest thing he could do – go 5 wide. Cleveland sends everybody, sack, punt. The “smashmouth” crowd says he should have run here. That would have been fine, as running plays have a very good chance of gaining 1 yard, or he could have exploited expectations by using play action and throwing a 70 yard pass to our track star Mike Wallace. Sending out cheerleaders to say “WE’RE NOT RUNNING!!!”, however, demonstrates my biggest criticism of Arians – he doesn’t have any feel for playcalling, setting up defenses, or exploiting the opportunities that present themselves in-game.
- He doesn’t know how to beat man coverage. Whenever we face teams with good man corners we can never seem to get open. Ben can kind of piss himself against big blitzes, and some of our WR’s can have trouble beating jams, but when they do, they run little “zone-buster” stop routes. Every NFC North team we faced in 2008 did this to us, and we failed to show any improvement. A year later, Cleveland – CLEVELAND – did the same thing to us. Drag routes really aren’t that complex.
- Whenever the offense has some early success, they collectively take their foot off the gas, and a big part of that is playcalling.
- Have you seen us (try to) run a screen pass?
- The offensive line has always been full of big oafs who are generally strong but unathletic. Meanwhile Willie Parker had some of the worst vision of any RB in the league. Arians had them running a ZONE BLOCKING SCHEME for 2 full years, with absolutely no success (most pronounced against 4-3 teams), before largely switching back to a more man-based scheme once they drafted a back who ran in a ZBS in college. Not that I’m complaining about that last part – the offensive line was still huge and slow.
- He’s a “three tight end guy”
- Dennis Dixon ran an option-read offense in college. Rashard Mendenhall also played in an option-read offense. At the end of the first half of Dixon’s first start, we ran one option-read play that resulted in a touchdown run. Hmm, can we at least try this again to keep the defense off balance and see if it works? Nah, let’s let our new QB chuck the ball into zone coverage – which he obviously can’t figure out – for the whole 2nd half and overtime.
- And then there’s this: “3rd and 6 at PIT 26, (2:56) (Shotgun) B.Roethlisberger left tackle to PIT 27 for 1 yard (S.Knight).”
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by BadMaafala on Aug 3, 2010 11:50 AM EDT reply actions 1 recs
An excellent response. Thank you, BadMaafala
I agree with quite a bit of this and I LOVE that this discussion has progressed into something more than “Arians is an idiot.” My favorite thing in your post by far is your criticism of the zone blocking scheme. That is the sort of informed Arains criticism that I would support.
Nevertheless, my argument is not that Bruce Arains is beyond criticism. Certainly he called a lot of plays that made me want to pull my hair out, but then again it was that kind of season. I do think that the Steelers’ inability to convert short yardage situations via the ground game probably forced his hand a little more than we realize though.
In a way I think that pointing out specific plays isn’t that helpful because every coach in the league will have a few of those. Even Belichick got criticized for going for it on fourth down because doing so broke away from orthodoxy and ended in failure.
What I am more interested in are those arguments which show the effectiveness of Arians’ gameplan once the sample size gets larger, and I really do believe that most of those numbers are pretty good. The problem, in my view, is that the objectivity necessary to make those kinds of determinations goes right out the window once terms like "identity start getting thrown around.
by Sam Wilmoth on Aug 4, 2010 8:52 PM EDT up reply actions
The sample size is bigger than you think. Arians has been an offensive coordinator for 6 years: 3 with the Browns, 3 with the Steelers. Here are his DVOA ranks:
Year, Total, Passing, Rushing
2001, 30, 29, 29
2002, 24, 18, 26
2003, 23, 24, 21
2007, 9, 7, 18
2008, 21, 19, 15
2009, 7, 7, 17
Gross Averages: 19, 17, 21
DVOA is fairly adept at figuring out how good a team is – certainly more accurately than traditional statistics. Unfortunately, as great as the FO guys are, their numbers are based on 16 games not 162, they describe the sum of a bunch of interdependent matchups not neatly parsed individual matchups, and they have no way of separating a coach from his players. Bill Walsh might not have been able to do anything with Couch and company, while I assert that a trained monkey could pick plays for Ben to improvise out of. So evaluating coaches is 90% subjective.
In my previous post, I picked a handful of plays that are slight outliers, but illustrate general principles that have been evident throughout his tenure as OC. I could come up with 10 more off the top of my head; the 49ers and Broncos games in 2007 come to mind as well as a the more obvious examples of the Eagles and Cowboys games in 2008. My overarching criticisms of him are:
- No feel for playcalling, setting up defenses, using in-game advantages. Just kind of arbitrarily picks plays. I’ve heard this described as “grab-bag playcalling”.
- Generally doesn’t scheme to maximize the strengths of his players and weaknesses of opponents.
- Doesn’t know how to run a screen
- Self-destructs against good man coverage
- Hasn’t tried to help his biggest asset – Roethlisberger – improve on glaring weaknesses. Personally I feel Roethlisberger has a lot of upside which would have been realized by now if Whis was still his coach.
- Offense has had the most success in no-huddle, in which he doesn’t call the plays.
You don’t need to be a creative genious to address the concerns above; those are things I would expect from any solid playcaller.
Bruce Arians appologists almost always rely on stats to defend him. In 2007, it was “we had the 2nd QB rating in the league and the league leading rusher before he got injured” (Tomlin actually said this. Sigh.). In 2008 it was “well, we won the Super Bowl with him”. Now we’re going back to DVOA. Hopefully, the DVOA rankings above demonstrate the futility of defending (or praising) a coach based on his stats on one team over the course of a few years. Despite that, I’ve never heard anyone try to build a subjective argument (i.e. the only one that can be made) based on examples of his playcalling that brought consistent success – probably because there is no case to be made.
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by BadMaafala on Aug 5, 2010 11:29 AM EDT up reply actions
Agreed
A little long winded, but a pretty accurate accessment …
The more I learn -The less I think I know! Just enjoy reading and sharing.
by steeler junky on Aug 5, 2010 2:32 PM EDT up reply actions
“Dennis Dixon ran an option-read offense in college. Rashard Mendenhall also played in an option-read offense. At the end of the first half of Dixon’s first start, we ran one option-read play that resulted in a touchdown run. Hmm, can we at least try this again to keep the defense off balance and see if it works? Nah, let’s let our new QB chuck the ball into zone coverage – which he obviously can’t figure out – for the whole 2nd half and overtime”
While I don’t think Arians was the main problem at all last year, the game plan at Baltimore really had me screaming at the TV. You are totally correct on this one.
What killed me last year was the defense. I was at the Raider game, where the O kept coming back. Gradkowski was right in front of me when he threw a pass that hung in the air longer than a Ray Guy punt. I thought, “There’s no way that’s complete.” Then as I watched it float down, feather-like, I realized that it was indeed going to be caught. That and the play action play that totally suckered our safety. Absolutely pathetic.
by AJF67 on Aug 4, 2010 2:33 AM EDT reply actions 1 recs
No argument from me there. The main problem is how reliant our secondary is on Polamalu. Clark and Carter were possibly the worst starting safeties in the league and Gay wasn’t helping anyone out. This is water under the bridge, but I still don’t understand what Polamalu was doing on the FG block team.
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by BadMaafala on Aug 4, 2010 10:18 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
The impact of Carter's horrendous play can't really be overstated.
I agree completely.
by Sam Wilmoth on Aug 4, 2010 8:53 PM EDT up reply actions
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