James Conner excited fans with a strong 2018 campaign when he replaced Le'Veon Bell and went for 973 yards and 12 touchdowns on 215 carries. But he still has work to do to be a complete player and lead the Steelers' young running-backs group.
Part of that work has to be on Conner's vision behind zone blocking schemes:
During the first half of the 2018 season, I wrote about how Conner excelled behind power-run schemes over zone-blocking schemes, and the importance of the difference. Conner's best plays often came when he had a lead blocker to follow, whether it was a pulling David DeCastro or a charging Roosevelt Nix.
However Conner had considerably less success behind zone-blocking schemes that didn't use a lead blocker. Here's an example of when he took a second too long to find his gap and ended up with a short gain against the Chiefs:
Not all of those plays were on Conner not feeling his way through the line, but it was noticeable that he hadn't quite figured out his style behind zone schemes. This is crucial to the Steelers because of how Bell made his career running brilliantly behind zone schemes, a serious part of the Steelers' arsenal.
Zone schemes force defenses to honor every gap, and the running back is tasked to find his own hole on these plays. The Steelers' line is one of the best in the NFL at opening holes on these plays, so it will be a huge step forward if Conner can specifically improve on these plays.
Fortunately for the Steelers, Conner did show flashes of improvement behind zone schemes late in the season. Here he is in the season finale starting off to his left, but cutting up just as he sees DeCastro chip up to the second level and wall off a linebacker. Eight-yard gains like this are the ones that eventually tire defenses out:
There's no question that running the ball has to be a bigger focus for the Steelers, as Ben Roethlisberger's 675 passing attempts were the most of his career, with the closest year being 608 attempts in 2014. Cutting down his attempts will allow him to be more efficient with the ball.
And having a confident zone running game to audible to at the line would be a nice weapon in Roethlisberger's back pocket to take advantage of unaware defenses.
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