Unpopular Opinion: The Steelers passing over the middle doesn’t equal success

When the Pittsburgh Steelers are in the dreaded long offseason, there are plenty of ideas to debate. As part of the triumphant trio on the Steelers Preview podcast, I’ve been known to often give a “Dave answer“ to various things as I often like to argue both sides of an issue. With this in mind, a new weekly segment has been born… Unpopular opinion.

There are plenty of arguments both for and against the Pittsburgh Steelers that might not go along with the majority of fans. Oftentimes I believe in these arguments, while other times I simply like to pose a counter argument for ones that are taking it too much to the extreme. For this reason, I’m going to offer some points about the Pittsburgh Steelers that go against the general fan narrative, or at least how I have heard things.

Next up is an opinion from and SCN listener about the emphasis on throwing the ball over the middle…

The Steelers passing over the middle doesn’t equal success

This unpopular opinion came to me from Dr. Anthony on Twitter/X who laid out the case that some of the best teams in the NFL do not throw the ball over the middle very often, and that there is little to no correlation between using the middle of the field in the passing game and a team being more successful. So I dove into the numbers…

To set up where I pulled data, Pro Football Reference (RFA) has the information broken down by plays. They classify passing plays as being to the left, to the right, or to the middle. Additionally, they classify passes as being short or long. A short pass is one that travels less than 15 yards beyond the line of scrimmage in the air. Any pass that is 15 yards or more is considered a long pass.

First, I looked at just the number of passes thrown in the middle of the field according to PFR by each team during the regular season. Looking at the pure numbers, the Steelers ranked 30th as one of two teams who did not even reach 100 passes in the middle of the field as they had 94. Teams who threw fewer passes were the Buffalo Bills (85) and the Philadelphia Eagles (71). I also looked at things based on the percentage of total passes. I did not want a team that didn’t throw the ball very often where they had lower numbers to greatly affect how often they threw in the middle of the field relative to how much they threw. When looking at the lowest numbers again, it was the same teams in the same order but with more variety. The Steelers ranked 30th throwing over the middle on 18.84% of their passes where the Bills did so on 16.35% of their passes and the Eagles on only 15.85% of their passes.

As for teams to throw it over the middle of the most, it was the Detroit Lions who had the most number of passes of 172 and the highest percentage of 31.22%. So even the team that threw over the middle the most in the NFL did not do so even on one-third of their passes. The other teams who threw the most over middle were a tie between the Washington Commanders and Dallas Cowboys with 159 passes. When it came to percentage of passes, Washington was second at 30.29% and the only other team above 30% as the next highest percentage was the San Francisco 49ers at 29.48%.

When looking at the teams who threw into the middle of the field the lowest percentage of their passes, three of the lowest five qualified for the playoffs. Looking at the teams who threw over the middle of the highest percentage of the time, two of the top five made the playoffs. So looking at the data, there’s no correlation between having more overall season-wide success by throwing over the middle more, and if there had to be a conclusion drawn it would actually be slightly tilted towards throwing over the middle less.

Here’s another way to look at it. The percent of throws over the middle by all the playoff teams from 2024 combined came to 22.98%. As for the non-playoff teams, they came in at 23.19%. Based on those numbers, there was hardly any difference in playoff teams with how much they threw over the middle compared to non-playoff teams, and if there was any difference it was slightly lower for the playoff teams.

Another way to break things down which gives some interesting results is looking at just the passes thrown long over the middle, meaning that went 15 yards are more beyond the line of scrimmage. With these numbers, it changed up things at the bottom slightly as the Steelers were ranked 30th with only 14 long passes over the middle this season, followed by the Arizona Cardinals (8) and the Philadelphia Eagles (7). When looking at these as a percentage, the Cardinals were actually last with only 1.47% of their passes being long over the middle with the Eagles being next to last at 1.56%. But the Steelers 2.81% actually ranked them 27th as the Kansas City Chiefs were ranked 30th with 2.50%, the Las Vegas Raiders were ranked 29th with 2.67%, and the New York Giants were ranked 28th with 2.71%. So when it came to throwing the ball long over the middle, both teams who participated in the Super Bowl did so less often than the Steelers. The Chiefs did throw one more long pass over the middle than the Steelers as they attempted 15 passes, but they also threw 102 more passes on the season than the Steelers.

Before getting into the teams it threw the most, what is interesting is to look at the Washington Commanders who, after ranking second in both pure numbers and percentage of all passes over the middle, dropped all the way to 28th in rank and 26th in percentage when it came to long passes over the middle. The Commanders threw 159 passes over the middle, but only 15 of them were long passes. They were the team with the biggest variance between the two categories.

Going the other way, the Minnesota Vikings were around the middle of the league when it came to how often they threw over the middle, but ranked third in both number and percentage of long passes as they threw the ball 34 times long over the middle on 6.20% of all their passes. The top score belonged to the San Francisco 49ers who threw 35 times over the middle for a 6.53% of all their passes. The New Orleans Saints were next as they were tied for first with 35 long passes and were second in percentage as 6.35%.

Much like with the number of passes over the middle, looking at the long passes and teams who made the playoffs didn’t show much separation. But this time, there were three of the top five teams who made the playoffs and only two of the bottom five teams that made the playoffs. Ironically, those bottom two teams were the two teams who participated in the Super Bowl.

Looking at the total percentage of throws long over the middle for playoff teams versus non-playoff teams, they were very close yet the higher percentage was flipped. Of teams that made the playoffs, they threw long over the middle 4.11% of their throws where teams who didn’t make the playoffs threw long over the middle 3.93% of their throws.

Whether or not the length of the throw goes into this debate or not it’s up to each person, I just thought I would give the data.

One last thing to look at is how many touchdowns and interceptions teams threw over the middle. For this one, the data is all over the place. The team who threw the most touchdowns over the middle was the Cincinnati Bengals who ranked 13th in their percentage of passes over the middle. But the team who threw the highest percentage of their passes over the middle for touchdowns was the Philadelphia Eagles as seven of their 71 passes over the middle went for touchdowns. But on the other end of the spectrum, the Las Vegas Raiders only threw one touchdown over the middle despite throwing the eighth most number of passes over the middle.

As for interceptions, the numbers there mostly lined up with the number of throws. The Browns threw the most interceptions over the middle as a team who threw the ninth most passes over the middle while the Chicago Bears threw no interceptions in the middle of the field but they only threw the 27th most passes over the middle. Of the 12 teams who threw three interceptions or less in the middle of the field, all but two of them were in the bottom half of the league for the number of passes thrown over the middle. So it seemed like interceptions fell more in line with volume than anything.

Obviously, looking at the numbers, there doesn’t appear to be a correlation between how often a team throws over the middle and how successful they are. Thinking if the Steelers suddenly start using the middle of the field in the passing game is not a guarantee that they will have more overall success. While I do believe having more of a threat to throw over the middle and making a team defend the entire field is important, it really is not some magic elixir to success by targeting the middle of the field.

To hear the latest Unpopular Opinion podcast, check it out in the player below. Be sure to check back for this podcast every Sunday morning during the Steelers offseason.