Correlation is a funny thing. Everybody knows the phrase “correlation does not equal causation” and we can put this into context regarding offense lineman B.J. Finney, who has a knack for being on the field when the Steelers offense explodes.

Last week versus the Kansas City Chiefs Finney was starting at left guard in place of Ramon Foster. On that day, the offense was on fire with Le’Veon Bell and company rushing for 194 yards. While this one game with Finney starting may seem like fortune or luck, if you look at all of Finney’s career starts, you will see that in most games he has started the offense has thrived.

So the question is, has the offense thrived because of Finney, or is all just coincidence?

This table below details each career start for B.J. Finney, including the total yards for the offense that day, the total rushing yards, as well as if the team won that game.

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B.J. Finney career starts

Game	Win/Loss	Total yards	Rush yards
10/02/16 – Kansas City	W	436	149
12/11/16 – Buffalo	W	460	240
1/01/17 – Cleveland*	W	312	69
10/01/17 – Baltimore	W	381	173
10/15/17 – Kansas City	W	439	194
Average	W	405.6	165

Each game Finney has started, minus last year’s Cleveland game (where many starters were benched) the Steelers offense operated at an elite level. If we put aside that one game, each time Finney started the Steelers rushed for at least 149 yards.

The Steelers have also yet to lose a game with him starting.

Don’t jump to any conclusions though, it is highly unlikely the Steelers will rush for 165 yards a game and go undefeated in each game Finney starts.

In order to dig even deeper, lets compare Finney to starter Ramon Foster. The table below compares the average total yards of the offense and the average rushing yards for the offense with each player starting.

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Ramon Foster vs B.J. Finney 2016 starts

Starter	Avg total yards	Avg rushing yards
Ramon Foster	365.7	100.2
B.J. Finney	402.7	152.7

All of these numbers show that the offense doesn’t skip a beat with Foster in the game.

Again, it’s worth prefacing that we cannot jump to conclusions based on this information, especially with a small body of work by Finney. But it is still interesting to compare these numbers and there’s context worth considering such as the game plan, quality of opponent, and even the weather conditions. These factors impact how an offense performs and how prevalent a rushing attack is.

Therefore it would be unfair to proclaim that Finney should be starting over Foster because the numbers say so. (Not that anyone is making that argument just yet.)

The biggest takeaway from all of this data is that this B.J. Finney is a perfect fit for this offense and is more than simply a capable back-up. He is in line to take over as a starter in the near future.