Steelers Now
All it took to get the Pittsburgh Steelers run game humming was a quick trip across the pond to Ireland. After an outstanding performance versus the league’s top-ranked defense, they are currently ranked 4th in rushing success rate and 12th in rushing EPA/play. This game felt like the fulfilling of a prophecy of sorts from an organization that has preached the importance of winning with their bigs in the trenches for a couple years now. All five starting linemen, 80% of whom are on rookie contracts, made an impact in this one, but it was a surprising curveball from offensive coordinator Arthur Smith that propelled them to victory on Sunday.
The Steelers used jumbo personnel (six OL) on 18 of their snaps, averaging over 5.6 yards per play. He was intentionally adding more mass up front to counter Brian Flores’ defensive structure, with a significant uptick in snaps from Darnell Washington, who played a season-high 48 snaps in this contest. Even acknowledging how dominant Minnesota had been defensively through the first month of the season, there were a couple of weaknesses that they were able to pick at, which led to a whopping 62% rushing success rate on the day.
The first being that the Vikings’ philosophy is rooted in the idea of playing two safeties deep because of their reliance on middle-field open zone coverages. This naturally creates a light box count, but the difference here is that they stay true to that ideology even when opposing teams get heavier by putting multiple tight ends on the field. For example, coming into this game, Flores and company were deploying a light box on 54% of their defensive snaps when encountering 12 personnel (two TE sets), which was the highest rate in the entire NFL. Instead of using Pat Freiermuth and Jonnu Smith, Smith turned the dial all the way up with Anderson instead.
Steelers tight end snaps counts today:
Darnell Washington: 48
Spencer Anderson: 19 (Jumbo)
Connor Heyward: 16
Pat Freiermuth: 15
Jonnu Smith: 13— Derrick (@Steelers_DB) September 28, 2025
Once Pittsburgh was able to establish a lead, thanks to DK Metcalf’s electric 80-yard catch and run, they opted to simply pound the rock down their throats. And it was glorious to watch. Even in the third quarter, the Vikings never adjusted to their plan. They continued to operate at a numbers disadvantage up front, with Washington and Anderson controlling the C-gap at will. Even aside from Kenneth Gainwell’s career day, rookie Kaleb Johnson finally had a couple nice moments as well.
This dup rep was the best play from the Washington/Anderson pairing from their jumbo personnel grouping.
You can drive a truck through the C-gap. Great work. pic.twitter.com/8T6XZCpIjs
— Derrick (@Steelers_DB) September 30, 2025
That wasn’t the only point of emphasis in Smith’s attack either. Coming into Week 4, the Vikings defense was allowing 5.1 yards per carry on runs outside the tackles....
