Now that the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2023 season is getting underway after the team finished above .500 but failing to make the postseason last year, we turn our attention to the next chapter of Steelers football and everything that entails. One thing that it means is that some stock evaluations are going to start taking on more specific contexts as we get into the season, reflecting more immediate plusses and minus rather than trends over long periods. The nature of the evaluation, whether short-term or long-term, will be noted in the reasoning section below.
Player: TE Pat Freiermuth
Stock Value: Down
Reasoning: With two catches in as many weeks and more poor-effort blocks on tape than that, third-year TE Pat Freiermuth has not gotten off to a great start to the season. He isn’t being used much in the passing game thus far, about which he says he has no complaints, but he should be featured. And he needs to step up when he doesn’t have the ball.
This is going to be as much about how Pat Freiermuth is being used as it is about his actual performance. He has only been targeted three times so far this year with two catches for five yards. One of them happened to be a touchdown. None of the others were drops, but there was one he could have had in the end zone, taking a shot to influence the incompletion.
A former second-round pick, Freiermuth is meant to be a productive, high-volume outlet for his quarterbacks, now Kenny Pickett, but the second-year slinger doesn’t seem to be finding him, or even particularly looking his way.
He says he’s not concerned about his usage rate, but perhaps he should be. No, he shouldn’t publicly complain about it in the media, but what is he saying behind closed doors? Is he telling Pickett that he’s open more often than the quarterback seems to think?
and then there are these low-effort blocks when he’s working in the run game. Is this particular play indicative of his overall performance in the blocking department? No, it’s not always quite this bad. But in spite of what he may have said, the reality is that he has not made strides as a blocker since entering the NFL.
indeed, that may be one of the reasons the Steelers drafted TE Darnell Washington in the third round. Freiermuth even said after Washington was drafted that he was basically hoping it would free him up more to do less blocking. Well, he already is doing less.
It’s not just one play, or one observer. Former Steelers DL Chris Hoke, now an analyst, was also critical of Freiermuth and his effort this week on 93.7 The Fan with Joe Starkey and Ron Cook. He cited poor perimeter blocking (e.g. the tight end position) as one of the biggest issues with the run game.
