Study: How Well Is Pittsburgh Executing And Defending Play-Action?

Steelers play actionPlay-action can be an impactful element to an NFL offense. Today, I wanted to look at and provide data on how things have been going in that regard for the Pittsburgh Steelers on both sides of the ball, along with the rest of the NFL for comparison.

Let’s start with play-action attempts on offense, along with play-action attempts faced by defenses. All data courtesy of Sports Info Solutions (SIS):

The visual highlights that the volume of play-action has been below average on both sides of the ball this season. Pittsburgh’s offense has 56 play-action attempts in 2025, which ranks 25th, and 63 play-action attempts on defense rank closer to the mean at 18th.

On the upper…