In case you didn’t notice during the preseason, the Pittsburgh Steelers certainly planted the idea in people’s heads that they are going to make the defensive back blitz a greater part of their offense, as this was something of a staple for them over the course of the four exhibition games, more so than it has been in past regular seasons.
According to Pro Football Focus, the Steelers sent a defensive back on a blitz 99 times during the 2016 season, and they did so on somewhere around 650 passing snaps, which figures out to something roughly in the territory about 15 percent of the time, overall, though that also has to be tempered with the fact that multiple defensive backs could blitz on the same play.