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: S Minkah Fitzpatrick
Stock Value: Up
Reasoning: The veteran safety declared himself fully healthy and ready to go for the playoff opener against the Buffalo Bills. Having missed seven total games this season, Fitzpatrick sat out the final three games of the regular season due to a knee injury. He told reporters that he felt he could have played last week, but the team made an “executive decision”.
Here’s an interesting fact to make of what you will. The Steelers have played 10 games without Minkah Fitzpatrick since they first acquired him via trade in 2019. They have an 8-2 record in those 10 games, including the last three wins to end the season, with CB Patrick Peterson and practice squad S Eric Rowe manning the back end. They are 6-1 this year without him and 4-6 with him in 2023.
Clearly, it’s a horrible mistake to put him back into the lineup, given the facts, right? Only if you’re an idiot, of course. Although he did not have his best year when on the field and had a couple of gaffes in coverage, the Steelers didn’t lose those games because of him.
He will be a welcome addition to the secondary as he gets back on the field, for sure, putting a chess piece back on the board just as OLB T.J. Watt finds himself sidelined for at least one game. The Steelers can only hope that Fitzpatrick helps the Steelers reach another game for Watt to return to.
Anyway, the point is, Fitzpatrick is coming back. He declared himself 100 percent healthy when speaking to reporters yesterday and added that he wanted to play last week. It was only an “executive decision” on the part of the coaching and training staff that kept him off the field.
The former All-Pro safety banged knees with Peterson in a game against the Indianapolis Colts four weeks ago, a sort of friendly-fire injury that also took Watt down last week. Earlier in the year, he missed four games after suffering a non-contact hamstring injury. He had only missed three games during his career prior to that.
But there isn’t much you can do about injuries beyond conditioning your body and learning how to protect yourself on the field. There’s no reason to believe that he doesn’t know what he’s doing in that regard. It’s just been a very unfortunate year, but now he’s back and can help contribute to an unlikely playoff push.
