Not long after the Pittsburgh Steelers named Arthur Smith their new offensive coordinator, I took a look at how he uses tight ends. The point of that exercise was largely to see how TE Pat Freiermuth could be used in the new-look offense. At that point, the results were quite promising because Smith loves to use his tight ends.
Then came the complete overhaul of the quarterback room. Russell Wilson is currently in “pole position” heading into the offseason workout schedule. Yet many people, including ESPN’s Louis Riddick, think Justin Fields will come out on top in the competition eventually.
So why don’t we see which of Wilson and Fields has been more successful utilizing tight ends? It may not determine who will be the sure-fire starter, but it’s a big part of the passing offense. It may help give us a clearer picture as we get ready for the competition to truly start.
A Refresher On Smith’s Tight End Usage
You can check out the in-depth study I did in the first link for the whole statistical background, but here’s a quick recap. In Smith’s three years as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons, the Falcons targeted their tight ends on at least 26.5 percent of their passing attempts. That was the low in 2022 while the high was 34 percent in 2023. That led the league. So that means that in 2023, the Falcons averaged one pass attempt targeting a tight end out of every three passing attempts.
It was a very different picture in Tennessee. When Smith was the offensive coordinator for the Titans from 2019-20, the Titans never even hit a 20 percent target share for the tight ends. Now mind you, the roster picture was very different from the Titans to the Falcons. The Titans had Jonnu Smith and MyCole Pruitt (who went to Atlanta and is now in Pittsburgh). The Falcons drafted Kyle Pitts. There’s a decent gap in talent.
A Tale Of Two Very Different Quarterbacks
Justin Fields has said that he models his game after Russell Wilson. However, if you look at how they utilized tight ends in 2023, it’s hard to envision that statement. So to lay some groundwork, there were 49 quarterbacks in 2023 that attempted at least 100 passes. Out of all 49 quarterbacks, Wilson ranked 47th in percentage of passes thrown toward tight ends with 13.5 percent. Who were the only ones lower? Jimmy Garappolo at 12.1 percent and Tua Tagovailoa at 9.6.
Fields threw passes to his tight ends at a rate almost double Wilson’s. He targeted a tight end on 24.5 percent of all his throws. That ranked 15th in the league. If you’re curious how last year’s starting quarterback for the Steelers did, I’ve got that too. Pickett targeted a tight end on 18.7 percent of all his throws, 37th in the league.
As for Smith’s quarterbacks, Desmond Ridder targeted a tight on 35.2 percent of his passing attempts, number one in the league. Taylor Heinicke targeted tight ends 30.7 percent of the time, seventh in the league. Just further proof that Smith wanted to throw to his tight ends.
However, target share isn’t the end-all, be-all of statistics for this conversation. We don’t personally know every play call, so it could simply be that the Broncos were calling plays to utilize their wide receiver corps more. So just how often they targeted tight ends isn’t enough. We need to see how successful these quarterbacks were when they targeted their tight ends.
The Stats
In order to understand how these quarterbacks best utilize their tight ends, we need to go several levels deep into the statistics. Let’s start with the simplest and ground-level statistic: completion percentage. You can throw all the passes in the general direction of a tight end, but if you aren’t making it easy for the tight end to catch, target share doesn’t matter.
Russell Wilson does climb up the list a bit, but it’s hard to go down from 47th. He had a completion percentage of 62.5, good for 43rd out of our 49 quarterbacks. Interestingly enough, he’s not the lowest of the five quarterbacks we looked at. That dubious distinction belongs to Taylor Heinicke. He only completed 53.9 percent of his passes targeting quarterbacks, 48th in the league. PJ Walker was 49th, completing only 50 percent of his attempts.
Heinicke’s teammate, Desmond Ridder, completed 68.9 percent of his tight end targets, 34th in the league. Kenny Pickett completed essential 69 percent of his passes to tight ends, just one spot ahead of Ridder (by .03 percent).
Like Wilson, Justin Fields also climbed up the list. His completion percentage? 75.9 percent, 13th out of all eligible quarterbacks. So Fields attempted passes targeting tight ends at a much higher percentage than Wilson and also completed those passes at a much higher rate.
But the completion percentage by itself doesn’t paint a clear enough picture. Are those passes going downfield and gaining yards or are they simple dump-offs that barely gain anything? This is where we get into the advanced statistics with ANY/A. This stands for Adjusted Net Yards Per Attempt. We are all familiar with yards per attempt: simply the yardage gained divided by passing attempts. What the adjusted net yards per attempt does is factor in other areas, namely sacks, touchdowns, and interceptions. Standard yards per attempt does not factor in sacks nor does it differentiate between how the pass ends. An interception simply counts as a passing attempt.
ANY/A weights the yardage gained on a touchdown more heavily than standard yardage. It also heavily weights interceptions negatively while subtracting the yardage lost for sacks. So this gives us a much more complete picture of a passing attempt.
We also know that both Wilson and Fields are known for taking a lot of sacks. That should affect their ANY/A numbers heavily.
Once again, Wilson finds himself quite far down the list. He had 4.7 ANY/A, 45th in the league. Pickett had 6.16 ANY/A which keeps him about the same spot, 33rd in the league. As an aside, Mitch Trubisky finished with a 1.92 ANY/A when targeting tight ends in 2023. That’s him hanging out in the bottom left corner of the chart by himself.
Despite having one of the lowest completion percentages when targeting a tight end, Heinicke had 7.33 ANY/A, 26th in the league. Ridder finished five spots ahead of him with a 7.73 ANY/A when targeting tight ends.
Ahead of all of them was Justin Fields. He finished 12th in the league with 8.31 ANY/A when targeting tight ends. And just for fun, Fields has a passer rating of 112.3 when targeting tight ends in 2023. That ranked seventh in the league. Wilson had a rating of 79.3, 43rd in the league.
What Does It All Mean?
Targeting tight ends is not the only thing quarterbacks do in Arthur Smith’s offense. However, based on the statistics, it’s been a big part of his offense in the last three seasons. If Smith plans to continue that in 2024 with the Steelers, the statistics overwhelmingly support Justin Fields as being much more successful than Russell Wilson when it comes to throwing to tight ends. Not only did he target tight ends more often than Wilson, but Fields did so more successfully. His completion percentage was 13.4 percent higher, and he had an ANY/A 3.61 yards higher than Wilson.
Does that mean Fields should be starting Week 1? It certainly helps his case.
