The crew over at the Sports Info Solutions’ Off The Charts Football Podcast has been working on a series called “Scouts vs. Stats,” looking at the different positions in the NFL this offseason. The newest episode dropped on Thursday covering tight ends, and Pittsburgh’s Pat Freiermuth was ranked 10th overall by the statistical model. SIS’ statistical model is based on the concept of Total Points, which is a scale used to integrate all the data points that SIS measures about a football play and the players involved with it.
“He’s been a pretty solid security blanket… in Pat’s first two years here,” said SIS analyst Jeff Weaver. “He’s 12th in our pass game Total Points metric. He is 21st in run blocking, and that ended up being fourth in the Top 10, so pretty solid run blocker… Just an overall kind of solid tight end.”
Per Weaver, Freiermuth was the 27th-best tight end in the league in broken and missed tackle rate, the sixth-highest in their statistical Top 10 ranking. It’s interesting that Freiermuth ranked so high among the top 10 in both the run-blocking and breaking tackle metrics. Per their statistical write-up, the run-blocking grade makes up 15% of their total grade while the broken and missed tackles grade only makes up 5%. That might be why Freiermuth just barely squeaked into the statistical top 10.
However, it wasn’t only the stats that thought that highly of Freiermuth. Jeff Dean, a member of the SIS Football Operations Department, was a guest on this episode and had Freiermuth in his personal top 10.
“He’s kind of the slightly older-school security blanket thought-of tight end,” Dean said. “He’s not a guy that’s going to be a special talent out in the open field. He’s not the one that’s going to beat you vertically often, but his ability to see an increased target share is impressive. But I thought how they used him expanded a lot this last year.”
While Freiermuth only caught three more passes in 2022, what he did with the 63 receptions he had in 2022 was markedly improved from his rookie year in every stat except for touchdown. As a rookie, he had 60 receptions for 497 yards. His longest reception was 24 yards and he averaged 8.3 yards per catch. Thirty-four of his receptions went for a first down and he had two receptions that covered at least 20 yards.
In 2022, Freiermuth had 63 receptions for 732 yards, an average of 11.6 yards per catch. That was an increase of 3.3 yards per reception. His longest catch of the year was 57 yards while a total of 9 of his receptions covered at least 20 yards. Of his 63 catches, 37 of them converted a first down.
Perhaps one of the biggest changes that Freiermuth saw was where he was targeted on the field. Per PlayerProfiler.com, his Averaged Depth of Target was 5.0 yards downfield. In 2022, that depth jumped to 8.7 yards downfield. A jump of 3.7 yards per target meant that offensive coordinator Matt Canada attempted (and succeeded) in having Freiermuth put more pressure on the defense farther from the line of scrimmage.
So while Freiermuth may not be a vertical threat on the same level as San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle (12.8 yards per catch), Freiermuth can certainly help move the chains effectively in the Steelers’ offense. That ability to get open in areas of the field that can make picking up first downs easier coupled with a lack of drops means that he is one of the top all-around tight ends in the league.
As for the rest of the list, Freiermuth finished directly behind Hunter Henry in the Statistical Analysis top 10 while Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce took the top spot on both lists. Both lists also had Kittle second and the Baltimore Ravens’ Mark Andrews third.
