You would be well within your rights to suggest that Pittsburgh Steelers’ tight end Pat Freiermuth has “under-performed” since being drafted in the second round of the 2021 NFL Draft. When you select a guy that high, you expect to get a good return on your investment. After his performance yesterday, one should hope that this was not an outlier. Instead, we should hope it’s a sign of things to come.
Freiermuth’s 120 yards receiving Sunday in Cincinnati was the first time in his two and a half seasons that he broke the 100 yard mark in receiving. Frankly, I thought he would have had more of those by now but not all of the blame should lay with him. The former Penn State Nittany Lion has suffered from concussions during his professional career. Along with a hamstring injury this year, Freiermuth has played in just 38 of 48 games for the Steelers.
Injuries aside, Freiermuth can also point to the fact that he was largely ignored in Matt Canada’s offense which is the only one he’s known in the Steel City. It’s easy to jump to conclusions following his performance in Cincinnati and why not? He looked like a completely different player and the offense itself looked different too. Obviously teams will start having to pay more attention to him coming off of this performance which could and I stress ‘could,’ start opening things up for other receivers.
The combination of Mike Sullivan and Eddie Faulkner made it abundantly clear yesterday that they not only plan to use him more but we saw more of Darnell Washington as well. Perhaps the two-tight end or ’12’ personnel we thought we’d see a lot of this year may come to fruition.
Staying healthy is the most important thing Freiermuth can do moving forward. Easier said than done to be sure, but now that we’ve seen just how impactful he can be the pressure is on to see more and on a much more consistent basis.
