The Pittsburgh Steelers actually managed to use a fair bit of 12 personnel against the Bengals, but that wasn’t necessarily the surprising part. The bigger surprise is that rookie tight end Jesse James actually took the majority of the TE2 snaps during the game, outplaying Matt Spaeth by snap count 16 to 11, with some 13 personnel, of course, mixed in.
That was a bit over 20 percent of the Steelers’ offensive snaps, with a mixture of run plays and passes. Admittedly, his blocking technique remains a work in progress, but, unless there was some issue unreported about Spaeth, the coaching staff is obviously comfortable with James’ development if he has been given TE2 snaps over the 33-year-old veteran.