Nobody is likely to mistake the 2023 season for the best of Pittsburgh Steelers S Minkah Fitzpatrick’s career up to this point. Even though he is on pace to be targeted in coverage more than at any other point in his career, he has just two passes defensed on the season, for example. He does have 41 tackles while keeping his misses to a minimum, but we’ve all seen him play at a higher level.
That includes Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin who has some simple, straightforward advice for anybody questioning Fitzpatrick this year. whether out of concern or an opportunity to criticize, it’s not hard to see that his current numbers don’t reflect him at his best, but Tomlin wants you to be patient.
“Minkah’s a playmaker. It’s like when people ask me about T.J. [Watt] and sacks. Just keep watching. They’re gonna come”, he said on the Mike Tomlin Show, which aired yesterday, with Bob Pompeani. “Minkah’s a dynamic playmaker and has been. Usually, when they come, they come in bunches. It’d be prudent not to question Minkah and his talents because he probably quickly is gonna prove any of those doubters wrong”.
Fitzpatrick had a career-high six interceptions last season. Three of them came within the first four weeks of the season. His final two came over the span of the final three games. He went nine games to open the 2022 season without an interception before having one in back-to-back games and a recovered fumble a couple of games later.
Five times in his career, Fitzpatrick has recorded an interception following a game in which he recorded an interception, and he has 19 in his career. Including a game in which he had two interceptions, that accounts for 13 of his 19 career interceptions coming in sequence with others.
But while the playmaking ability of their best players remains forever crucial to this defense, it would be unfair to reduce a player like Fitzpatrick to just one statistic. He and others like Watt offer a complete skill set and contribute positively in every aspect of their position—even if it’s the splash plays that earned them top-of-the-market contract extensions.
There is so much more that Fitzpatrick offers to this team than just an interception every four or five games, so we can’t simply measure his season by where his number in the takeaway column stands. It’s just the most immediate and most noticeable way in which his exceptional talents manifest themselves.
