The Pittsburgh Steelers offense has a lot of question marks going into 2024. Chief among them, and the one that everyone is talking about, is the quarterback position. That topic has dominated and will continue to dominate the media cycle until the positional “controversy” is put to rest.
But there are other questions on that side of the ball, mainly the skill position players. It’s not exactly an inspiring group of names, but some context is needed. They spent most of last season with awful quarterback play and playcalling from Matt Canada. There’s at least some untapped potential, especially with a guy like Pat Freiermuth.
ESPN’s Bill Barnwell ranked the Steelers’ skill position group 27th in the NFL, calling the passing game “Pickens or bust.” Aditi Kinkhabwala was on 93.7 The Fan today and pushed back against this assessment, especially when it came to the dismissal of Pat Freiermuth.
“We haven’t seen anybody in the Arthur Smith offense,” Kinkhabwala said. “You’re judging what people have done in what was literally the single most dysfunctional offense in the National Football League for a number of years. You mentioned Pat Freiermuth and I keep saying this over and over again that I believe that he’s going to have a monster year. Think about who he was as a rookie. What a great red-zone target he was. And then think about the way Matt Canada used him, which is basically not at all. And then in the first game when Matt Canada wasn’t calling the plays, when Eddie Faulkner and Mike Sullivan were running the offense, Pat had this monster game.”
Pat Freiermuth was second on the team in touchdowns during his rookie season in 2021, recording seven (Diontae Johnson had eight). Since then, however, he has recorded just four touchdowns over the last two seasons. Last season was a step back for him, as he had just one regular season game with more than 50 yards. It was also the only game he had more than three receptions.
It just didn’t seem like they were looking for him much last year, as he averaged under four targets a game. It’s hard to put up good numbers when you are getting that little volume, and your team only throws for 13 touchdowns all year. That’s where a lot of the optimism for his 2024 campaign stems from.
The other big aspect is the addition of Arthur Smith. Smith historically has used his tight ends quite a bit. We don’t know if Pat Freiermuth will ever truly rank among the elite group in the NFL, but we do know that he’s talented and that he’s likely been misused. He still has defenders, as seen here, but this is about as make-or-break of a year as it gets. There are no excuses if he continues to struggle in 2024.
