Regardless of what label you’d like to put on Connor Heyward positionally, he has started the 2023 preseason off strong as a versatile piece for Pittsburgh. Our team at Steelers Depot has highlighted this well, including own Josh Carney’s recent article and Terrible Take. Piggybacking off these thoughts, I wanted to look at this from a stats perspective today.
In the 2023 preseason opener, Heyward’s primarily alignment was at tight end, doing damage in the pass game in particular. Let’s look at Pro Football Focus’s (PFF) offense and receiving grades for tight ends in week one of the preseason:
Out of the 99 tight ends that appeared in week one of the preseason, Heyward was Pro Football Focus’ highest receiving (94.4) and offense (93.7) graded tight end. Even more impressively, his marks also topped all skill position players (running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends), giving comparative context around the league to his impactful 12 snap debut. This included a nice 24-yard explosive catch, getting vertical up the numbers despite a press from the linebacker, along with a nice angle route to get open for a third down conversion with some yards after catch to boot.
Both plays were big in getting Pittsburgh into scoring position, with the latter into the red zone for the touchdown run by Anthony McFarland that followed. Sure, this is preseason and the Buccaneers didn’t play many starters, but the impact was very encouraging to see.
Heyward also provided four snaps in the backfield, as a fullback and even getting a carry as a true running back, a successful 5-yard run. In his 2022 rookie season, Heyward had 123 snaps as an inline tight end, 37 in the slot, 14 as a wide out, playing the most on special teams snaps (284), with none in the backfield, but did have two carries that were successful late in the season, highlighted by an explosive 21-yarder that iced the victory against the Raiders.
At Michigan State, Heyward provided great versatility, with his tight end experience coming primarily in 2021, his final season. Prior to that, he was utilized most in the backfield. Here is a table of his career snaps in college by alignment:
To Carney’s point, we see that Heyward has the experience at running back to see more opportunity there, another wrinkle the Steelers could utilize more if they so choose. Within the backfield opportunities, PFF even had Heyward charted for six QB alignments in 2018. If you check out this highlight clip at 1:20, albeit from running back alignment, we see he even passed for an explosive 36-yard touchdown that year against Penn State. I’m here for it if a trick play of this sort is on the docket, perhaps more of the short yardage/end around variety we have seen Pittsburgh use recently (a la wide receiver Chase Claypool in 2022).
Next, I wanted to dive into some stats for Heyward’s college career at running back, looking at players with at least 100 carries (160 qualifying players) to see how he fared. The aforementioned 2018 season is when he had the most running back snaps (412) a 67.5 run grade (139th) on 114 rush attempts (T-134th), 527 yards (144th), 4.6 yards per attempt (T-121st), and five touchdowns (T-113th), which was the only season out of his five with the Spartans to have a rushing touchdown. Overall low marks among running backs. Heyward did have a long of 80 yards on one of his rushing touchdowns, which impressively tied for the 17th longest run.
Another positive was 32 catches, which tied for eight most at the position. 2020 was his second most opportunities at running back, when he had 228 run snaps, 66 rush attempts, 202 yards, 3.1 yards per attempt, a 60.2 run grade, and 17 catches, all down ticks.
So, we can see the success at the running back position was not eye-popping for Heyward in college overall, and the move to tight end as his primary spot being the right call. While not elite findings, lack of competition or a “true” fullback at the end of the Steelers running back depth chart, along with his experience could lead to some looks there. If Pittsburgh sprinkles in even more of the versatility Heyward provides as opposed to his higher usage collegiate career, I agree with Carney and like the chances he could continue to provide quality over quantity for the black and gold in 2023.
Thanks for reading and let me know your thoughts in the comments.
