We saved the best, or at least the most important, for last. The 2016 season was not Ben Roethlisberger's best year. While he did drastically improve his touchdown to interception ratio from 2015, he still suffered an injury that forced him to miss time and his consistency waned at some of the most crucial times during the season.
However, it is worth mentioning the adversity which Roethlisberger had to endure within the Steelers' offense. Though he did have Le'Veon Bell and Antonio Brown for most of the season, he effectively lost both of his deep threat receivers in Martavis Bryant and Sammie Coates. He also missed the second-tier of his wide receivers in Markus Wheaton and Darrius Heyward-Bey for most of the season, plus the lingering injury to LaDarius Green, which kept Roethlisberger's starting tight end and newest addition out for most of the season.
That's not to excuse Roethlisberger from the problems we'll point out in our breakdown, but it will provide more reasoning to why the Steelers' offense stalled at different points. Though he's still the man for the Steelers to keep around for their pending Super Bowl hopes, there's certainly some clear answers as to what brought about his struggles.
While the Steelers should feel comfortable that Roethlisberger should be around for at least another year or two, Landry Jones answered the question as to whether he could ever become a starter after Roethisberger's retirement with his play. So we'll start with him in our film review before we get into the team's leader:
LANDRY JONES
The experiment of the pocket quarterback with a strong arm from Oklahoma is all but over. While it made sense for the Steelers to take a shot on Jones back in the fourth round of the 2013 NFL draft, Kevin Colbert is almost certainly done considering any part of a future for Jones with the team outside of a third spot on the depth chart for extremely cheap.
Strengths: Jones' best quality is that with his arm he can fire passes deep down the field. That deep ball ability is what made him an attractive draft candidate when he was in college. Jones can still put some mustard on his shorter passes or fit a deep ball into holes down the field when the opportunity presents itself.
Here you see what happens when Jones is able to get a solid enough of a pocket to find a weak spot in the defense:
When the pressure is not on, Jones can float a ball that leads his receiver to the right spot. He's made some plays facing down the pass rush, but the biggest factor is often when he is able to both recognize the defense he faces and work through his progressions.
What's great about this play is how Jones recognized that the safety to his left was all about doubling Brown in coverage and that left Heyward-Bey in single coverage on a corner route. While the ball should've been to Heyward-Bey quicker, it was still the right read and a touchdown.
This is Jones when he's at his best.
Weaknesses: The problem is, Jones is very rarely at his best. Even when he makes correct reads his accuracy is sporadic. The interception he threw in the Browns game is a perfect example:
Not much X's and O's to go over here, it's just a bad pass. The problem is that with Jones many have grown to expect this instead of a good pass like we saw later in this same game when he led the team to an overtime touchdown.
But when you couple that with his ever-apparent problems at reading the defense, you see the reasons why Jones has not been good in the NFL. Watch here in his game against the Patriots, as it's third-and-short and Jones locks onto Xavier Grimble for the entire play:
These are the kind of reads that an NFL veteran is expected to make, yet Jones doesn't. The Patriots know that the Steelers want to get past the first down marker, so they play tight flat coverage as Malcolm Butler rotates from Brown back to Grimble.
Jones never reads that and throws right into the coverage, resulting in a fourth down.
Value: My expectations is that if Jones remains he will be playing second fiddle to a free agent quarterback that will be signed or be competing for the backup position with a rookie the Steelers acquire in the draft. He's had four years to develop, and has improved, but is still not the caliber of player that the Steelers need as their backup quarterback to Roethlisberger, let alone his heir.
BEN ROETHLISBERGER
The leader of the Steelers' offense needs no introduction in the film room, but we do want to talk about where he can improve. The biggest criticism is about his consistency, so we'll start by highlighting what he does when he's on fire.
Strengths: Roethlisberger, when at his best, is a surgeon that picks apart defenses. Thanks to the offensive arsenal that Kevin Colbert has loaded the Steelers' roster with, defenses have to respect the various ways which the Steelers offense is dangerous.
One of those ways is the screen, which is a fake in its own right, but can also be a setup to a different play. Wide receiver screens have long been a staple in Roethlisberger's arsenal, and over the past few years reading the defense as they bite on those screens has as well:
Notice how Roethlisberger sells the fake hard, staring down Cobi Hamilton on the edge. That forces Landon Collins to come up and opens up the seam for Green into the end zone.
This is when Roethlisberger is at his most dangerous. While finding Brown and Bell at different parts of the field is often the most entertaining and exciting way for the Steelers to score, it's when Roethlisberger works with all his targets that defenses are on their heels.
Take this simple seam route to Jesse James. Roethlisberger recognizes the corner blitz, which means the safety is the only person that can cover Eli Rogers in the slot:
Once the safety vacates his space to cover Rogers in the flat, James is open for an easy gain against a middle linebacker that has too much ground to cover.
When Roethlisberger does this enough throughout a game, that's when defenses start to soften their doubling of Bell and Brown and have to play more bland schemes. When that happens, then the superstars can tear apart single coverage that isn't focused just on them.
Still, there are those moments when Roethlisberger can do things that most other quarterbacks can't do. We saw that against the Ravens when he completed a huge third-down pass to Rogers on the run, but an even better example is what he did to the Ravens in the Steelers' loss in Baltimore:
Roethlisberger's rapport with Brown is one of the most unbelievable parts of football. So often they do things that aren't scripted and find ways to make it happen on the fly. The Ravens took away all of Roethlisberger's reads and even force him to leave the pocket, but somehow he finds Brown improvising against double coverage for a touchdown.
While those plays are remarkable, they're also not that dependable and more liable for mistakes or a defender making a play on the ball. What Todd Haley wants is for Brown to get into favorable matchups and for Roethlisberger to take advantage of them. Take this touchdown pass for example:
The Steelers know Brown can beat Vontae Davis when being pressed, so Brown works to get around him. Once that happens, Roethlisberger throws a back shoulder pass. This is one of the more unstoppable parts of the Steelers' offense when they get single coverage on Brown along the sideline.
Unless a cornerback is sitting and waiting for the back shoulder pass, all Roethlisberger has to do is put it there and Brown will grab it. But cornerbacks cannot afford to do so because that would open them up to be burned deep down the field. That's why teams like the Patriots use their safeties to double Brown so much. It takes away the unpredictable nature that leaves defensive backs exposed to a guessing game.
Weaknesses: The problem is that when Roethlisberger tries to key in on Brown to force those moments to happen, good defenses capitalize. That's what the Patriots did throughout the AFC Championship Game. They sacrificed openings all over the field in order to take away Brown because they knew Roethlisberger would forgo his reads to give his best playmaker a chance:
You see the safety over the top of Brown, clearly assigned to let Malcolm Butler work the underneath patterns and help if he gets beat deep. What Roethlisberger doesn't see is Hamilton wide open on an in route over the middle of the field for a first down.
That's the predictability of Roethlisberger that gets him in trouble. Even in that brilliant touchdown he threw against the Ravens that we showed earlier, that's against double coverage on his best receiver. The good teams recognize his problems and try to force him to consistently dump off to his other options. Taking what the defense gives you is something that makes Tom Brady one of the best ever, because he does it so often and gives no favor to any of his receivers more often than not.
Combine that with Roethlisberger's occasional inaccurate passes and the Steelers find themselves in trouble. That's another reason teams are happy to concede underneath routes to less threatening players. It gives them two opportunities for Roethlisberger to make a mistake, either in his reads or his throw, instead of him just chucking up a pass deep down the field into single coverage that could result in a quick score.
Take this bad pass for an example:
Nothing really complicated here, just a missed throw on third down. But again, that's why opponents are satisfied with these types of plays. They keep the big plays limited and force Roethlisberger to dink and dunk, which eliminates his biggest weapon, the deep ball.
Value: That's part of what the Steelers need to see more of in 2017. They lost both their deep threat guys in Coates and Bryant, which limited Roethlisberger's game. We all saw what happened even when Coates was healthy, as he torched both the Jets and Chiefs for big plays that forced defenses to honor him.
If Bryant is back next season, the Steelers will look to make him the guy that safeties have to honor deep and allow Brown to work underneath. With Coates on the field as well, both being potential deep threats while Brown, Bell and whichever tight end is in the game would allow for Roethlisberger to have his pick much more easily.
Roethlisberger is absolutely the quarterback the Steelers need to stick with, but they've needed him to improve this phase of his game for several years now. The growth has been there, but it hasn't been enough to get them over the hump and into the Super Bowl.
OVERVIEW
The Steelers absolutely must make moves in the quarterback department this season. Free agent players available could be picked up for the immediate backup job to Roethlisberger, but they also should make plans to find Roethlisberger's heir soon. Not because he might retire this year or next, but because it would behoove the organization to groom a good player to be ready and able to take flight in an offense that could still have several elite weapons and a very dependable offensive line.
That will not be the case if that person is Jones. We'll get into some of the potential candidates when we start to roll out our draft coverage, but we will also be taking a look at free agent possibilities in the coming weeks.
We'll be back on Monday to get you ready for the NFL Scouting Combine, which will allow us to start with our assessments of the draft talent the Steelers should consider.
Steelers
Carter's Classroom final grades: Quarterbacks
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