Pittsburgh Steelers TE Pat Freiermuth has received a lot of attention in light of the team’s wide receiver room. After trading Diontae Johnson, most feel they didn’t adequately restock the position. The obvious solution many find is for Freiermuth to take on a bigger role in the passing game. But for Mike Tomlin, that’s how he already sees his tight end’s role.
“I don’t know what you mean by that”, he said yesterday when a reporter asked about using Pat Freiermuth more like a wide receiver this year, via the team’s website. “In terms of splitting him out, we’ve done that in the past. No issues there. Most of the time in two-tight-end sets, he’s often the one that’s displaced from the core and acts like a wide receiver”.
To translate, Tomlin is saying that he isn’t telling you the Steelers will do anything different with Pat Freiermuth. Whether they are or not is another matter, but for now, he wants you to think nothing is changing.
What changes and why, though, is also another discussion. Yes, the Steelers lost Johnson and only replaced him with guys like Roman Wilson and Van Jefferson. But they also brought in a new offensive coordinator who makes a lot of use of his tight ends. Freiermuth will get a lot of work under Arthur Smith, but what will that look like?
A 2021 second-round draft pick, Pat Freiermuth is coming off a down year amid injury and lack of targets. He only caught 32 passes for 308 yards and two touchdowns all season, albeit in 12 games played. Just a year earlier, he caught 63 passes for 732 yards, and as a rookie, he caught seven touchdown passes.
Analysts expected Freiermuth to make a linear progression last season, but the early injury sidetracked him. As mentioned, former offensive coordinator Matt Canada also struggled to know how to use him at times.
But Freiermuth is more of a wide receiver? He claims to have improved his speed this offseason, but he is not Vernon Davis. He is not one of those “glorified receiver” tight ends, even if he is far from an elite blocker.
While the Steelers may or may not increase his “wide receiver” snaps, Freiermuth will be a huge part of this offense. One hopes that Smith will manage to get the most out of him both as a pass catcher and blocker. He also has Darnell Washington, Connor Heyward, and MyCole Pruitt to work with at the position.
As for the wide receivers, outside of Pickens, the Steelers have Calvin Austin III, Roman Wilson, Van Jefferson, Quez Watkins, Scotty Miller, and Marquez Callaway as the most notable names. It is a forgettable group, as I ably proved yesterday in forgetting Wilson on my 53-man roster prediction.
In other words, there certainly is meat on the bone for Pat Freiermuth to carve out a larger role. So to Tomlin’s point, they used him wide or in the slot 223 times last year on 518 snaps. That is quite a bit and actually a percentage increase from his first two seasons.
