​Pittsburgh Steelers Jaylen Warren celebrates a 50-yard touchdown against the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. — Ed Thompson / Steelers NowThe Pittsburgh Steelers are a run-first football team.Outside of a few years in the second halves of the tenures of Terry Bradshaw and Ben Roethlisberger, that has been the case for almost the entirety of the franchise.On Sunday, Aaron Rodgers passed 5,000 yards in his Steelers career. That’s a good season for a quarterback these days. With that mark now 12th all-time in passing in the 93-year history of the team.But while the Steelers have long been a bastion of defense and running the football, things changed when the club hired Mike McCarthy this January.McCarthy’s West Coast offense is decidedly not run-first. In his final season with the Dallas Cowboys in 2024, when Dak Prescott was injured and he had to lean on Cooper Rush at quarterback, the Cowboys finished sixth in the league in percentage of passing plays.All throughout the offseason, the Steelers looked like a vision of that McCarthy West Coast scheme, lining up almost exclusively with three wide receivers on the field, and throwing the ball a lot.In the season opener against the Atlanta Falcons, the Steelers ran the ball 21 times and threw it 41. Even after Jaylen Warren emerged as the team’s best offensive weapon and injuries to Michael Pittman Jr. and Roman Wilson made the prospect of producing a consistent passing game far less likely, Rodgers had 49 passing attempts compared to 22 team carries in the club’s Week 6 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Oct. 18.The Steelers were having a lot of success running the ball, but they were using big plays in the passing game to loosen up defenses first, allowing Warren to attack lighter boxes. With the deep speed of Wilson on the sideline, the Steelers were down to just DK Metcalf when it came to stretching defenses. His production has been inconsistent enough this season that the Steelers path to a successful offensive game plan was getting a bit thin.McCarthy wanted to run the ball more, but he needed a way to get it going without having to first lighten the box with some deep passing. So he stole a page from Arthur Smith’s playbook.Instead of waiting for the Saints to lighten the box, the Steelers got heavier up front. The Steelers came out to start their game against the New Orleans Saints on Sunday with offensive lineman Spencer Anderson serving as a jumbo tight end, a role that he served in very successfully throughout the 2025 season.  On the second play of the game, with Anderson in the game at tight end, Warren ran up the middle for 29 yards. Jaylen Warren breaks through for a 29 yard rush#HereWeGo#PITvsNOpic.twitter.com/yf0DaByLW0— False Finish (@FalseFinishHQ) October 25, 2026They ran it again. Nine yards. Again. Five more. The entire opening drive of the game, the Steelers mostly moved the ball via Warren and the six-man offensive line. McCarthy found a way to get to