Opportunity is staring Pittsburgh Steelers rookie TE Darnell Washington in the face. The team having just placed Pat Freiermuth on the Reserve/Injured List, he will have at least the next four games to try to expand his role within the offense to extend beyond blocking assignments.
Not that it hasn’t come at all. He has been targeted three times, making one catch for 10 yards. But that’s not very much considering the fact that he has already played 150 snaps and is on pace for about 500 or so on the season, a good, hearty total for a rookie tight end. The question is, will the team be ready to use him?
“It takes time for an OC to get to know their players”, the rookie tight end told reporters last week, via 93.7 The Fan’s Jeff Hathhorn. “I came in as a rookie. You could go based on college highlights or film, that’s not always the case. He’s still learning me and my abilities”.
The ‘he’ referred to here is of course the offensive coordinator, Matt Canada, under whom Freiermuth caught 60-plus passes from the tight end position in each of his first two seasons. It might be a bit much to hope for that in Washingtons’ future.
Billing himself as a sixth lineman at one point on at least one of his social media profiles, you do get a sense of who Washington is at his core. Or at least, that is who he had been, but the Steelers knew when they drafted him that he could be more.
They believe that he can play a bigger role as a receiving threat than was indicated during his college career—in part because he played on a Georgia Bulldogs team with one of the best receiving tight ends in college football.
The Steelers saw that during the pre-draft process, including at the NFL Scouting Combine. They got a good first-hand look at it during training camp. It seemed during one stretch that he was catching a touchdown on a daily basis.
Of course, none of that counted. They have been less willing to look in his direction now that everything counts, though at the same time, they have other targets. And even now with Freiermuth on the shelf for at least the next four games, it comes at the same time that they are getting WR Diontae Johnson back.
The Steelers will have a hard enough time trying to juggle splitting targets between Johnson and George Pickens. Worrying about getting work for your number two tight end is not going to be a top priority, when viewed from that perspective.
But there are scenarios in which you look for a big-bodied tight end rather than a wide receiver. There will be times over the next four games when they look his way when they might otherwise target Freiermuth. How he performs in those moments will be crucial in telling the story of the second half of his rookie season and will help define how he heads into his second year.
