PITTSBURGH -- Through six games, Ben Roethlisberger is on pace for personal bests in passing yards and attempts by a wide margin at age 36.
Save two ugly halves against Baltimore and Cleveland, Roethlisberger has the Pittsburgh Steelers' offense looking dangerous again. A look inside his performance shows that a few things have changed with Big Ben, while a few things remain the same entering Sunday's matchup with the Cleveland Browns.
Fewer deep shots: Roethlisberger led the NFL with 2,033 passing yards entering Week 7, and he did so with volume. Roethlisberger is flirting with 700 passing attempts on the year, far more than his career high of 608 set in 2014.
Passing numbers are up across the league, and Roethlisberger acknowledged on his weekly radio show that the new norm might be 2-to-1 ratios of pass-to-run. The Steelers are right on that mark, with 261 passing attempts to 131 rushes.
This setup suits Roethlisberger as long as he limits turnovers, but many of his yards are coming from short to intermediate passes.
From 2015-17, Roethlisberger threw farther than 31 yards downfield on 7.14 percent of his attempts, hitting on 30 percent of those launches. This year, Big Ben is going deep on 4.98 percent of his attempts, completing two of 13 such throws (a 15.3 success rate).
Roethlisberger still has a strong arm, but perhaps the gunslinger mentality of his late 20s and early 30s is passing. He has talked openly about being a "smart quarterback" and not forcing the ball to Antonio Brown unnecessarily. That's a big factor here, too.
Many of those deep shots used to go to certified freak athlete Martavis Bryant, who's now in Oakland. Roethlisberger is still trying to establish a connection with new deep threat James Washington.
Accuracy over the middle: Roethlisberger is an 80 percent passer when targeting his tight ends, slot receiver and running back this season. Consider:
Vance McDonald: 20 catches on 24 targets
Jesse James: 17 catches on 21 targets
James Conner: 26 catches on 35 targets
Ryan Switzer: 13 catches on 15 targets
These players typically run safer routes inside of 15 yards. But it's hard to argue with that production when coupled with JuJu Smith-Schuster's 42 catches on 63 targets (66.7 percent).
Of course, Brown's presence opens all of this up, and after six total touchdowns and back-to-back 100-yard games, Brown and Roethlisberger appear back on track. But since the Week 4 loss to Baltimore that featured four punts, an interception and a turnover on downs in the second half, Roethlisberger generally has found Brown on shorter yardage throws to capitalize on his yards-after-catch ability while avoiding the double-coverage throws. Four of Roethlisberger's six interceptions have happened while targeting Brown.
Roethlisberger will have even more yards when he figures out the Washington connection. The rookie has five catches for 49 yards despite 14 targets, many of which were on deeper passes. Roethlisberger has at least a 55 percent success rate with every other receiver on the team with at least 10 targets.
More mobile Big Ben?: A Week 6 play that resulted in a ho-hum 9 yards could have much bigger implications for the Steelers' offense.
In the second quarter of a win over Cincinnati, Roethlisberger rolled to his left with three options -- a shovel pass to McDonald or passes to Conner or Brown flaring toward the sideline at different depths.
Easy throw and catch to the open man.
The Steelers haven't rolled out Roethlisberger much in recent years, but they want to experiment more with this to capitalize on his improved fitness in 2018.
Don't expect Roethlisberger to break off Patrick Mahomes-style sprints downfield, but he's still mobile enough to get out of the pocket and throw on the move, a strength that has been underutilized in the past.