DK’s Daily Shot of Steelers: September surprise!

DK’s Daily Shot of Steelers: September surprise!

[Music] So, here’s something for you. Your favorite team’s offense might have a little bit of a surprise in store for all of us, really. Morning to you. Good Thursday morning. I’m Dan Kvachovich of DK Pittsburgh Sports and this is Daily Shot of Steelers. It comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you’re into hockey and/or baseball, I also offer daily shots, the other two teams in town that I cover, the Penguins and the Pirates. I hope you’ll check those out as well. Rich Freebar, who writes for Warren Sharp’s football analysis website, did some intensive research on running back usage in recent years. Not the Steelers, the whole NFL. I found it compelling partly because it helps to explain the devaluing of the position around the league. And by devaluing, I mean in the literal sense, as in they’re being paid less. KBAR showed that the rate of touches per game that the running back position gets has gone down 7 years in a row, ranging from 56.7 in 2017 to 54.3 this past season. But it also showed, and this was the part I was eager to share with you, that the receptions per game by the running backs are the reason for that. They have also decreased 7 years in a row. That range is from 10.8 in 2017 to 8.9 this past season. In other words, we’re a long ways away from Levon Bell. And the sport as a whole is a long ways away from whatever it was that compelled Bell’s idiot agent to ask the Steelers to pay him the wages for both a running back and a wide receiver, if you’ll recall. Now, what does this matter in Pittsburgh? Well, I think a lot. First off, when I think of the Steelers throwing to running backs, the first imagery that pops into my mind, fair or not, is Naji Harris dropping everything that was sent out to him. And you can actually picture it yourself as I say it, right? Runs out to the left, soft little toss. He starts looking elsewhere. He doesn’t even catch the ball. He finished, by the way, the season with four official drops. But noteworthy within that, he had the fifth highest drop rate of any running back in the league at 8.3%. Dude dropped 8.3% of everything thrown his way. Whereas Jaylen Warren, who dropped only one, who dropped only one of his 47 targets on the season, he made 38 catches for 310 yards, showed that he could be and has been, keeping this real, a part of such an offense. Meaning where you could throw to the running back. Here’s where I digress a little bit, and I promise I’ll get back to it. In the book Moneyball, and don’t ever say that you know about Moneyball because you watched the movie. Go read the book. The book is unbelievable. Just the writing of Michael Lewis is unbelievable. It has nothing to do with baseball or sports or whatever. It’s about exploiting weaknesses in a market. That can apply in all kinds of lines of business and life and whatever. If they’re zagging, then you zigg. If they’re all chasing home run hitters, then you go and chase singles guys, contact guys, get on base guys. That’s what it’s about. Actually had very little to do with money. So, anybody who’s been listening to this program for a while will know that I’ve long advocated that the management of the Steelers should be trying more things that are a little bit outside the box or even a lot outside the box if it means gaining an advantage over your opponents. Maybe the most prominent example in recent years happened right there in Baltimore when they drafted Lamar Jackson. They knew they were going to blow up everything. And by that, I don’t just mean with the Ravens offense. I mean with the league’s approach to offense. There’s a reason that John Harbaugh and others associated with that team that same summer predicted that the Ravens would be unstoppable. And you want to know something? They were. And they’ve been that pretty much ever since. It was a really, really, really bold move that’s paid off with everything. Well, except for a Super Bowl for that particular group. Now, the Steelers, to their credit, have had their fair share, even just in these past couple of decades of bold type moves. I I consider the the drafting and utilization of Ryan Shayer to be one of the boldest moves that we’ve seen in the league in this century. Steelers were way ahead on having inside linebackers who not only look like safeties but cover like safeties and Shazir of course was among the best of them just as an individual. I consider the recognition and from there the utilization of Troy Palamalo to be something in that category. Heck, if you want to go back to the ‘9s, Cordell Stewart, I mean, Cordell is a 2025 quarterback who was born 30 years too early and he’d tell you the same thing. What if in this event the Steelers were to say, “Okay, everybody seems to be going away from running backs catching the football. There’s a quarterback in play now, Aaron Rogers, who’s very comfortable and has a rich history of throwing to his running backs in Green Bay. What if we have a guy or even two guys or possibly three guys that we feel can do this on a regular basis? And what if we have one of them who might be able to do it exceptionally well? Now we’re getting warm. Now you know where I’ve been heading the whole time. I have heard that the Steelers are very excited about Caleb Johnson. I’ve shared that with you previously. I have now also heard that one of the reasons that they’re as excited as they are about Johnson is they feel he can be this. They’ve seen things now here in Pittsburgh of Johnson that leads them to believe even beyond whatever college tape he’s put out there that he can be this. So they zag you zig. When we come back, J1Q. [Music] This segment of Daily Shot is brought to you by our good friends at Mike’s Beer Bar. They’re located on Federal Street, directly across from PNC Park. Mike has more than 500 beers on tap, including from more than 50 local breweries. Stop in and say hello. Tell Mike we sent you. Mike’s Beer Bar. [Music] Today’s J1 Q comes from Pamela who says, “DK, will Arthur Smith let Aaron Rogers audible?” The answer to that, Pamela, and and this kind of came up at mini camp, meaning with with Rogers to an extent, with Smith to an extent. The collected answer between the two, if you wanted to take them and just mash them all up into one big ball of tape, would be this. There’s a way that Rogers has always operated, not because he wants to be special or he’s been around a long time and he’s smarter than everybody else or whatever. There’s just a way that he has operated as a quarterback. There’s a way that he has done his job. I’ve said this before, including before he signed here, that if and when you add an Aaron Rogers, you are adding him because he is Aaron Rogers and because he has done what he’s done, not because he could come in and be what you want to make him. Otherwise, you’re wasting the resource, the position, everything. And there are rare occasions across the spectrum of professional sports where the athlete is equipped with so much more experience, information, and a general sense than any of his or her head coaches could possibly be that you have to just respect that. on the other side of the water here in Pittsburgh. I’ve covered a team like that obviously in the Penguins when a new coach comes in or for that matter even the old coach Mike Sullivan was there for a decade. You don’t, as Sullivan used to say regularly, go and tell Sydney Crosby how to create on the power play. You can talk about a team framework. You can talk about defending. You can talk about things that you want to do collectively, but you don’t say, “Hey, Sid, when you get the puck, dot dot dot.” My feel to date, Pamela, is that’s what you’re going to see, Rogers and Smith, and that’s what you should see up to and including the playbook itself. It’s Smith’s playbook. It’s Smith’s offensive concepts. It’s Smith continuing to build upon the other offensive pieces that the Steelers have accumulated along the way that are aimed at being part of a Smith offense. So, it’s not as if this quarterback showed up for mini camp with a giant playbook that says Aaron’s plays. It’s the size of a phone book and he boom drops it on the desk in the meeting room. No, he’s got to work with what Smith has. He’s got to work with the players that he has, but the Steelers in turn in order to maximize this asset. Well, first and foremost, they need to protect him. Not to keep beating down the age thing, but it’s real. And secondly, they have to use what’s made him for the better part of two decades legitimately great. legitimately one of the top handful of quarterbacks in NFL history. Can egos get in the way of that? Yes, of course they can. Do I believe that Arthur Smith has such an ego? No, I really don’t. I feel like I’ve gotten to know the man pretty well in his year and change here. Does Rogers have that? How will he react to adversity? Listen, I promised you guys that once he signed, for me, for me it’s a clean slate. I want to see what he can do. I want to see how he interacts with the Steelers. I don’t care how he interacted with anybody. Not that this was negative or positive or whatever. I just don’t care in New Jersey or for that matter even Green Bay. He’s here now. He’s in Pittsburgh. He’s a Steeler. And his input, yes, Pamela, including at the line of scrimmage is essential. It’s beyond essential to this team getting to where they hope to be. I appreciate the question. I appreciate everybody listening to Daily Shot of Steelers. Don’t forget we have a double shot coming up today at 400 p.m. Eastern. That’s live on our YouTube channel. You can be part of that and we hope that you are. Find the DK Pittsburgh Sports channel there or just come and watch on our own app website at DK Pittsburgh Sports. [Music]

There just might be a September surprise to this offense!

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