One stat confirms that Steelers Troy Polamalu was irreplaceable

The Pittsburgh Steelers had a first-ballot Hall of Fame safety in Troy Polamalu, but this impressive statistic shows just how valuable he was. 

I feel bad for the newest generation of Pittsburgh Steelers fans. They never got to experience the once-in-a-lifetime play of Troy Polamalu. Somehow, even his spectacular highlights don’t do him justice.

After retiring from the league, I had zero reserves that Polamalu was destined for the Hall of Fame, and he got in on his first ballot — headlining the class of 2020. During his spectacular 12-year career, Polamalu earned 8 Pro Bowl honors, four First-Team All-Pros, two Super Bowl titles, and was the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year in 2010. Polamalu also joined an extremely rare company when he was elected to the All-Decade Team of the 2000s.

Over the course of a dozen years — all of which came as a member of the Steelers — Polamalu amazed fans with his ability to seemingly be everywhere at once. He was a menace for opposing quarterbacks with his ability to stop the runner in the backfield and to take the ball away in the secondary.

According to Pro Football Reference, Polamalu finished his career with 32 interceptions, 3 defensive touchdowns, 398 INT return yards, 2 fumble recover touchdowns, 56 tackles for a loss, 14 forced fumbles, and a whopping 107 passes defended.

Despite all of these remarkable statistics, none is more impressive than the team’s record with and without him.

Steelers didn’t succeed when Polamalu wasn’t on the field

Get ready to have your mind blown. I did some research recently. I went back and looked at Troy Polamalu’s game splits and charted the Steelers record for every game that he started and did the same for the games that he missed due to injuries.

When Polamalu was healthy enough to play and in the lineup, Pittsburgh had a record of 96-46 — a win percentage of 67.6 percent. However, when Polamalu was absent or did not start, the Steelers were just 26-24 (win percentage of 52.0 percent), via PFR game splits. This is a monumental difference.

Obviously, there are a lot of factors that come into play here. If we wanted to be extremely detailed we could chart which other key players were also missing in each of the games that Polamalu was absent and who was also healthy when he was on the field. We could even be as detailed as to look at the teams the Steelers played during and the strength of schedule during his absence. But at some point, we are just overthinking it.

Polamalu was either injured or didn’t see the field for a combined 50 career games. This is a sample plenty big enough to generate some accurate results. It should come to nobody’s surprise that the team was much better with him on the field. For multiple seasons in the mid-2000s, the Steelers had the top defense in the league, and his impact was felt far and wide.

Troy Polamalu truly was a transcendent football player. There was nobody like him then, and I severely doubt there will be in the future. Simply put, the Steelers win percentage was 15.6% higher when Polamalu was out there playing with his hair on fire. There is a case to be made that he was one of the single most important non-quarterbacks of his generation.