Given how the offseason unfolded, would you have predicted that Pittsburgh Steelers rookie TE Darnell Washington would have zero targets through the first two games of the season? On a team with the seventh-most pass attempts in that span with 76?
Granted, the other tight ends haven’t gotten much work in the passing game, either. Pat Freiermuth has one of the Steelers’ two offensive touchdowns, but just five targets. Connor Heyward has seen the ball come his way four times.
Even though they drafted Washington with a priority on his blocking ability, it certainly felt as though there was momentum building about his ability to contribute as a receiver. Even the coaches expressed a sense of pleasant surprise about his progress in that area during training camp. So you can probably understand where former Steelers CB Bryant McFadden is coming from.
“I’m calling for a Darnell Washington touchdown. In the red zone”, he said on his All Things Covered podcast episode posted yesterday with his cousin and co-host Patrick Peterson. “If we get in the red zone and he’s not split out wide by himself and we don’t throw him the football, I might throw my remote through my television”.
I’m not sure his television is the only thing that needs protection in the greater Pittsburgh area, given how the first two weeks have gone. But here’s the thing: if Washington is to be a red-zone threat, then the Steelers need to get into the red zone.
Crazy concept, I know.
But they only gained 40 or more yards on two of their 12 meaningful possessions against the Cleveland Browns, and one of them was due to a 71-yard touchdown pass. The other one picked up 44 yards but still barely got into field goal range. They didn’t play a single snap in the red zone all game even with three scoring drives.
They did get into the red zone twice in the season opener against the San Francisco 49ers, one of which resulted in the aforementioned Freiermuth touchdown. Washington did log five snaps in the red zone, four of which were pass attempts, though only one of which was inside the 14-yard line. Needless to say, he was not the target on any of them, though he did line up wide once.
“If I see 80 not split out wide getting the fade ball—I don’t know. We’ll have to figure it out”, McFadden reiterated after Peterson warned him against breaking his own television, which he’ll have to put out his own money to replace.
That’s good advice for a lot of football fans, given the videos that we routinely see circulating social media with people breaking their own things in frustration over what they see their teams doing. I want to see Washington succeed in that area as much as the next Steelers fan. But I like my stuff. I’m not breaking it.
