Play-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 right, we see the Steelers’ last opponent in Indianapolis. They have run the most play-action on offense in 2025, while their defense has faced it the third-most. In Week 9, the Colts had ten play-action attempts on offense, their second-fewest in a game this year.

Part of this was Pittsburgh’s defensive success against their run game, along with Indianapolis trailing more than they’re accustomed to. The Steelers’ offense ran nine play-action plays in Week Nine, tied for their most in a game, matching that total against the Browns and Bengals in the division—an important quantity context on the season and most recently before diving deeper.

To examine the quality of play-action play, I chose to use Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt (ANY/A), which factors several essential elements into one stat (([Pass Yards] + 20[Pass TD] – 45[Interceptions] – [Sack Yards])/([Attempts] + [Sacks])). The defensive metric is Expected Points Added (EPA: how each play impacts the chance of scoring compared to what was expected), where lower numbers are best on defense.

Pretty extreme results for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the play-action game in 2025. Starting with the bright side, the defense has really limited opposing offenses’ play-action effectiveness with a second-ranked EPA (-0.28) that includes a substantial gap from the rest of the NFL. Also encouraging is that the Steelers’ defense is coming off its best performance in these terms, holding Indianapolis to a -1.17 EPA, which is by far their worst outing of 2025.

Certainly deserves props, among many things that went well on the defensive side of the ball for Pittsburgh in Week Nine. The other offenses Pittsburgh limited to a negative EPA, which is ideal, were the Seahawks (-0.65), Jets (-0.51), and Vikings (-0.37). Week Eight against Green Bay was by far their worst day limiting play-action (0.51), which they ran frequently to boot.

The offense has been quite the contrary, ranking next to last in ANY/A (4.4) this year—far cry from best in the league, held by Seattle at 12.3. The only game Pittsburgh has been in this realm was against the Browns, posting a 10.8 ANY/A. Last week, against the Colts, was their second-best performance of 2025, but notably lower results (5.3). All other games for the Steelers were 4.0 or less, with a particularly poor showing against Cincinnati (0.8).

Clearly a tale of two sides of the ball. It’s fantastic to know that Pittsburgh’s defense has been one of the best in the NFL at limiting play-action. However, the offense has struggled significantly, and the team’s style would undoubtedly benefit from a positive boost in the play-action game.

Pittsburgh’s next challenge is the Los Angeles Chargers. Their offense has run play-action fifth-most to date, and faced it an average amount with slightly above average effectiveness on both sides of the ball. Aligns well on paper for the Steelers defense to continue their strong play-action play, while the offense can hopefully trend positively against a less impactful play-action defense.