Now that we’ve had some time to go back, re-watch the game and dig in a little bit we are going to talk about a few things in the stats that really stood out for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Their 28-10 loss to the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday was ugly in all phases. But some of these stats might be uglier.
3 or maybe 0
It depends on how you look at it, but either way, the distribution of the run game is worrisome. The three represent the number of carries running back Kerrith Whyte got on Sunday. He was the second-leading rusher on the team. Benny Snell Jr., by comparison, had 18 carries. But the zero represents the number of carries by Jaylen Samuels. I get the idea of going with the hot hand but Samuels hadn’t seen more than seven carries in a game since Week 10.
2 on 6
This is the number of receptions wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster had in comparison to targets. Smith-Schuster’s season ended with 42 receptions for 552 receiving yards. Smith-Schuster is a very talented football player but a big part of the team’s shortcomings this season has been his lack of production and availability.
6.2
Ravens backup running back Gus Edwards had a huge game against the Steelers. He needed only 21 carries to gash the Steelers for 130 rushing yards. Edwards is a huge back who could start for a lot of NFL teams (including the Steelers) but we expected the Steelers defense to put up a better fight knowing exactly what Baltimore was planning to do.
3.8
This number represents the yards per attempt for Steelers quarterback Devlin Hodges. I know that Duck Mania was running high for a few games this season but it is hard to see him having any sort of NFL future at this point. Hodges went from taking too many chances and throwing interceptions to going so conservative he couldn’t get a completion at all.
