There have certainly been lots of thoughts tossed around about the Pittsburgh Steelers and new offensive coordinator Arthur Smith. You’ve probably heard ad nauseam that Smith is a run-first coach who will drag the Steelers further into mediocrity and the Stone Age of football. Now Smith does love to run the ball, and having coached in places with running backs like Derrick Henry and Bijan Robinson, who can blame him?
But what about the tight end position? One of the common criticisms of Smith’s tenure as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons was his usage of TE Kyle Pitts. Many complained that Pitts, the fourth overall pick of the 2021 NFL Draft, didn’t get used anywhere near as much as he should have been. That probably has Steelers fans worried about TE Pat Freiermuth who has shown an ability to be a playmaker at tight end but wasn’t utilized much in 2023.
So what does the data tell us about tight ends in Smith’s offenses? Let’s take a look at his three years as head coach and play caller in Atlanta and his two seasons as offensive coordinator of the Tennessee Titans. We’re going to look at how many times tight ends were targeted (while focusing on the top two), how that compares to the offense as a whole, and where the tight ends were targeted (Average Depth Of Target.) Then we can compare some of that data to the last three seasons in Pittsburgh under former offensive coordinator Matt Canada (and after he was fired midseason in 2023).
Atlanta Falcons
How Many Times Were Tight Ends Targeted (And What Percentage Of Targets Went To Tight Ends?)
Smith had the services of former first-round pick Kyle Pitts at tight end while head coach as Pitts was the first draft pick of Smith’s tenure in 2021. Right off the bat, Pitts was targeted 110 times, the fifth-most targets by a tight end that season. His average of 6.5 targets per game was ninth-most in the league as well. That’s quite a lot, but Smith still found a way to get another tight end involved in the passing game as well. Hayden Hurst was targeted 31 times in 13 games in 2021 for an average of 2.4 targets per game.
In 2021, when including backups, Smith targeted tight ends 152 times over 17 games. The Falcons as a whole attempted 554 passes that season, and tight ends were targeted on 27.4 percent of those throws.
The 2022 season was a bit different story for the tight end position. Pitts only played in 10 games due to injury and therefore was only targeted 59 times, an average of 5.9 targets per game. The second-most targeted tight end was MyCole Pruitt. He was targeted 21 times over 13 games, an average of only 1.6 targets per game. So that was a drastic drop-off from 2021 for the tight end position, which means you would expect the target share for the position to go down too, right?
Well, the Falcons threw the ball 154 fewer times than 2021 while other tight ends on the roster caught 26 passes (15 more than the previous season). So despite Pitts seeing just over half as many targets as he did in 2021 and Pruitt seeing 10 fewer targets than Hurst in the same number of games, tight ends were still targeted on 26.5 percent of all passing attempts. That’s less than one full percent lower than in 2021. Hence, tight ends were still a major point in the passing game.
Then in 2023 with a healthy Pitts back in the fold, the tight end position saw its biggest usage in Smith’s play-calling career. Pitts was targeted 90 times in 17 games, which is actually less per game than 2022 (5.3 targets per game). Then Jonnu Smith, a name that will be showing up in another section, was targeted 70 times in 17 games, an average of 4.1 targets per game. Smith sprinkled in 14 more targets to the lower parts of the tight-end depth chart, bringing us to a total of 174 tight-end targets.
Not surprisingly, the total number of passing attempts saw a significant bump as well in 2023 up to 508. However, that was 46 fewer attempts than in 2021. Then factor in that tight ends were targeted 22 more times than in 2021, and we get the biggest percentage of tight-end targets of Smith’s play-calling career to date: 34 percent. So in general, tight ends were targeted once every three passing attempts by the Falcons in 2023.
Where Were Tight Ends Targeted?
What is also important is seeing where tight ends were on the field when the passes came their way. Were these simply check-down passes as the tight ends were utilized as safety valves for the quarterback? That’s where Average Depth Of Target (ADOT) comes in. Simply put, this is how far downfield from the line of scrimmage the player is when targeted by a passing attempt. The lower the number, the closer to the line of scrimmage. So it stands to reason that if a tight end has a low ADOT, they are likely being used as a safety valve for a quarterback to simply get rid of the ball.
In three years under Smith, Pitts’ ADOT never fell below 10 yards. In his rookie season, he posted a career-low 10.8 ADOT. Then in 2022, he posted a career-high 13.8 ADOT before dropping down to an ADOT of 11.4 in 2023. Suffice it to say, the Falcons under Arthur Smith utilized Pitts as a vertical threat in the passing game.
What makes things interesting is the utilization of the second tight end. In each season, the second tight end behind Pitts was routinely targeted at a significantly lower depth. Hurst had an ADOT of 6.6 in 2021, Pruitt had an ADOT of 5.3 in 2022, and Smith posted an ADOT of 6.5 in 2023. The second tight end might have been utilized as more of a check-down option. It might have also been an interesting schematic design as a way to use both tight ends to stress defenders in the middle of the field.
Tennessee Titans
Before Smith became head coach of the Falcons, he spent two seasons running the Titans’ offense, rejuvenating QB Ryan Tannehill’s career and helping RB Derrick Henry reach career highs in attempts, yardage, touchdowns, and yards per carry. What we don’t talk about much is how the tight end position was utilized. That could be due to the lack of a similar tight end to Pitts in Atlanta. It could also be due to the evolution of Smith’s offense. Let’s look at the numbers.
Target Shares
In 2019, Smith’s first season as offensive coordinator, the Titans attempted 428 total passes. The top tight end in Tennessee was Jonnu Smith (the same one that showed up in Atlanta in 2023.) He had 44 targets in 16 games, an average of 2.8 targets per game. The second option at tight end was Delanie Walker in his last season in the NFL. He was targeted 31 times in seven games, an average of 4.4 targets per game. Another eight targets went to tight ends further down the depth chart bringing us to a total of 83 passing targets to tight ends. The Titans attempted 428 total passes for a tight-end target share of 19.4 percent.
Jonnu Smith saw an uptick in 2020 as he was targeted 65 times in 15 games, an average of 4.3 targets per game. MyCole Pruitt (who went with Arthur Smith to Atlanta) was targeted eight times in 11 games, less than a target per game. No other tight ends were targeted in 2020, so our total sits at 73 targets for tight ends. The Titans threw the ball 468 times in 2020, and tight ends were targeted 15.6 percent of the time.
Average Depth Of Target
Again, we see some differences in where the tight ends were targeted. Ironically, Jonu Smith saw the majority of the targets by tight ends but his ADOT was lower. He had an ADOT of 5.3 in 2019 and 5.5 in 2020. Walker had an ADOT of 7.5 in 2019, and Pruitt had an ADOT of 8.4 in 2020. So we still see a demonstrable difference between the primary tight ends in Tennessee, but it’s not quite as big as in Atlanta. We do see that difference start to grow from 2019 to 2020, though.
Pittsburgh Steelers
So how does that target share and ADOT data compare to the Steelers of the last three seasons? Are we going to see a massive shift in the role of the tight end or not?
In 2023, the Steelers attempted 484 passes. TE Pat Freiermuth was targeted 47 times in 12 games for an average of 3.9 targets per game. TE Connor Heyward was the second-most targeted tight end on the roster and was targeted 34 times over 17 games, an average of two targets per game. There were another 12 passes thrown to other tight ends on the roster for a total of 93 targets to tight ends. That’s a 19.2 percent target share for tight ends in 2023.
2022 tells a little bit different story. Freiermuth was much more healthy and played in 16 games where he saw a career-high 98 targets. TE Tanner Gentry saw 23 targets in 17 games, an average of 1.4 targets per game. The rest of the tight ends in Pittsburgh saw 17 targets for a total of 138 targets across the depth chart. The Steelers attempted 548 total passes, and the tight ends saw 25.2 percent of those throws.
Then in 2021, Freiermuth saw 79 targets in 16 games, an average of 4.9 targets per game. Gentry was targeted 25 times in 17 games for an average of 1.5 targets per game, and the rest of the tight ends saw 21 targets. Tight ends were targeted 125 times on 653 total passing attempts for a target share of 19.1 percent.
Obviously, those target share numbers are much more in line with Smith’s tenure in Tennessee. However, Freiermuth’s 2022 season was much more in line with some of Pitts’ target numbers in Atlanta rather than Jonnu Smith with the Titans.
As for ADOT, Freiermuth had a career-high 10.5 ADOT in 2022, but only 6.6 in 2023 and 5.3 in 2021. In 2023, Heyward had a respectable 5.1 ADOT, but Gentry was very much a check-down tight end, posting a 2.8 ADOT in 2022 and 3.0 in 2021.
So What Does That Mean?
Arthur Smith obviously utilized the tight end position in Atlanta. Tight ends were targeted more than once every four passing attempts each season, and in 2023, tight ends were targeted just over once every three throws. It doesn’t hurt to have a talent like Kyle Pitts, but even Jonnu Smith saw 70 passing targets in 2023. For people who have been crying on the Steelers to utilize Pat Freiermuth more, Arthur Smith could certainly do so.
Oh, and for those of you concerned about how often Pitts was targeted? D. Orlando Ledbetter, Falcons beat writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, joined the PM Team on 93.7 The Fan on Tuesday to discuss Smith’s time in Atlanta. Ledbetter, who has certainly watched quite a bit of the Falcons, did not seem to place the issue on Smith’s shoulders.
“As far as spreading the ball around, that was a quarterback issue with 12 interceptions, 12 touchdowns, and then 11 fumbles,” Ledbetter said. “I think he had more of a quarterback problem than a distribution problem.”
So we will see what all that means for Freiermuth next season.
