Steelers playing time shares from Sunday’s loss to KC
Each week we’ll take a look at the composition of the Steelers wins and losses (and ties too) by examining the team’s snap counts on offense and defense. Here’s a look at the makeup of last week’s game.
Offense
| Player | Snaps | Pct |
|---|---|---|
| Foster | 82 | 100% |
| Gilbert | 82 | 100% |
| Villanueva | 82 | 100% |
| Finney | 82 | 100% |
| Pouncey | 82 | 100% |
| Roethlisberger | 82 | 100% |
| Brown | 77 | 94% |
| Smith-Schuster | 76 | 93% |
| Conner | 72 | 88% |
| Washington | 66 | 80% |
| James | 45 | 55% |
| McDonald | 37 | 45% |
| Switzer | 13 | 16% |
| Grimble | 8 | 10% |
| Heyward-Bey | 6 | 7% |
| Nix | 4 | 5% |
| Ridley | 3 | 4% |
| Okorafor | 3 | 4% |
This week a few things shifted but others mostly remained the same. The biggest changes on the offensive side of the football was the return of TE Vance McDonald and benching of WR Justin Hunter to make way for second-round draft pick James Washington.
McDonald would nearly split time with James, which meant the bigger package players like Chuks Okorafor and Rosy Nix watched from the sidelines.
Washington would play 80% of the game, which assumes not only the game script was changed when the Steelers fell behind 21 points early, but that the rookie is more than ready for a nice workload.
Stevan Ridley came into the game to spell James Conner a few times, and Darrius Hewyard-Bey made an appearance, where he threw a key block on a big offensive gain.
Defense
| Player | Snaps | Pct |
|---|---|---|
| Davis | 58 | 100% |
| Burns | 58 | 100% |
| Williams | 58 | 100% |
| Dupree | 53 | 91% |
| Watt | 53 | 91% |
| Burnett | 52 | 90% |
| Heyward | 50 | 86% |
| Tuitt | 48 | 83% |
| Hilton | 42 | 72% |
| Edmunds | 32 | 55% |
| Bostic | 31 | 53% |
| Sutton | 29 | 50% |
| Sensabaugh | 29 | 50% |
| Hargrave | 17 | 29% |
| Walton | 13 | 22% |
| Chickillo | 10 | 17% |
| McCullers | 5 | 9% |
Dan McCullers continues to see playing time. Even if it’s a handful of snaps, he’s already hovering at the amount of reps he saw in all of 2017. The big man would get the Steelers only sack of the afternoon as well.
Sean Davis continues his iron man role on the Steelers defense, but maybe the most surprising change thus far this season is that Vince Williams never leaves the field either. Artie Burns joined those two in playing the entire 58 snaps on defense.
The mixed bag of playing time was in the secondary, where two players attempted to replace an injured Joe Haden. Cam Sutton started but got pulled for Coty Sensabaugh… and then they flipped again. Each played precisely one half of the game.
LT Walton surfaced after being inactive in Week 1, replacing the injured Tyson Alualu.
Statistics courtesy of the National Football League
