PITTSBURGH — Shortly after the Steelers hired offensive coordinator Arthur Smith in January of 2024, Pat Freiermuth’s phone rang. It was his agent, Kyle McCarthy.
“My agent is really close with (Arthur Smith) and he said, ‘Dude, you’re going to love him,’” Freiermuth said before the 2024 season. “The offense is sick towards tight ends.”
Throughout his career, Smith has earned a reputation as perhaps the NFL’s most tight end-friendly offensive coordinator. The year before he joined the Steelers, Smith’s offense in Atlanta led the league in receiving yards by tight ends and finished fifth in receptions by the position. It appeared to be a perfect situation for Freiermuth; just a few months later, he’d signed a four-year, $48.4 million contract. The $12.1 million annual value made him one of the NFL’s 10 highest-paid players at his position.
This offseason, the Steelers doubled down at tight end when they acquired Jonnu Smith, who was coming off a Pro Bowl season during which he racked up 88 receptions, 884 receiving yards and eight touchdowns for the Dolphins — all single-season franchise records for the position. The Steelers gave Smith a one-year extension that puts him in the top-10 earners at his position group, as well, with an average per year of $12 million, according to Over The Cap.
Given the Steelers’ lack of depth at wide receiver and the talent at tight end, it appeared Freiermuth and Smith were poised to enjoy prolific seasons. But 12 games into the season, it’s fair to ask: Has the tight end usage justified this approach to roster construction?
During Sunday’s loss to the Bills, Freiermuth logged just 17 snaps. That’s not even his season-low. He played just 15 snaps in Week 4 in Dublin. Once rewarded like a top-10 player at his position, Freiermuth is now, essentially, the third tight end on his own team’s depth chart.
“Obviously, it’s frustrating,” Freiermuth said. “But at the end of the day, I have complete faith in Arthur (Smith). We have a good relationship. Understanding what his thoughts were for the game plan, I don’t lose too much sleep over it. Just got to be able to understand my role, and hopefully it changes going forward.”
This is not how teams that pay their tight ends well are using their players. Every other tight end in the top 10 of earners in playing upwards of 66 percent of their team’s offensive snaps, some as high as 90 percent: San Francisco’s George Kittle (87.4 percent when healthy), Arizona’s Trey McBride (89.5 percent), Kansas City’s Travis Kelce (78.5 percent), Minnesota’s T.J. Hockenson (80.7 percent), Baltimore’s Mark Andrew (66.7 percent), Cleveland’s David Njoku (69.6 percent), Dallas’s Jake Ferguson (68.8 percent) and Chicago’s Cole Kmet (68.7 percent).
Then you have Freiermuth, who has played just 47.7 percent of snaps. Smith has played 57.7 percent. Darnell Washington, who is emerging as the most dynamic of the three, has played 60.7 percent of snaps. And Spencer Anderson, who counts as a tight end when he’s the extra offensive lineman, has played 37.1 percent of snaps since Week 4.
“It’s different packages,” Arthur Smith said. “Those guys, you talk about a few plays here and there. Darnell’s numbers really skyrocketed probably about Week 4, so he played the most. The rest of those guys, it’s been different personnel (and) circumstances, and sometimes talking about job descriptions, and again, sometimes flow of the game because of that (jumbo) package.”
It would be hard to look at those snap counts and say the Steelers are getting their money’s worth out of Freiermuth and Jonnu Smith. Their production stats continue to tell the same story. Among tight ends, Freiermuth ranks 45th in snaps (313), 30th in routes run (198), 33rd in targets (32), 26th in receptions (26) and 28th in yards (298). Meanwhile, Smith ranks 34th in snaps (383), 24th in routes (238), 28th in targets (43), 29th in receptions (30) and 40th in yards (190).
Here’s where things get wild. Let’s combine Freiermuth and Smith. Together, they make $24.11 million, which would make them the highest-paid tight end in the league by a wide margin. Together, they have 75 targets, 56 receptions and 488 yards. McBride ($19 million), Kelce ($17.1 million) and Ferguson ($12.5 million) exceed all of those numbers individually.
“If you look at the flip side of it, the context is that the tight end room, you mash up Pat [Freiermuth], Darnell [Washington] and Jonnu [Smith], you don’t have anybody sitting there with 65, 70 receptions,” Arthur Smith said. “But the emergence of Darnell and Kenny [Gainwell], there is give and take.”
To Arthur Smith’s point, the Steelers are still using tight ends, and using them a ton. The Steelers run 12 personnel (two tight ends) on 31.5 percent of snaps, the seventh-highest rate in the league. They have three tight ends on the field 15.9 percent of snaps, the second-highest rate in the league. And Aaron Rodgers has attempted 33.1 percent of his passes to tight ends (second-highest) while throwing to WRs a league-low 42 percent.
However, different situations call for different players. Because the Steelers haven’t been able to consistently run the ball out of traditional formations with five offensive linemen, they’ve had to use a jumbo package with Anderson as an extra lineman. He counts as a tight end in those stats, but he’s also taking time away from Freiermuth and Smith.
Everyone has been clamoring for years for the Steelers to feature Washington more as pass catcher. Rodgers has clicked with the 6-7, 311-pound tight end. That’s taken more snaps from Freiermuth and Smith.
The biggest issue (at least from my point of view) is that Jonnu Smith and Freiermuth’s skill sets are too similar. When they have two tight ends on the field, one is almost always a physical, in-line blocker (like Washington) and the other is in the mold of Freiermuth or Smith. In that way, when the Steelers are in two tight-end sets, they’re often just rotating, with Smith getting the majority of the playing time.
If the Steelers had one of the two, that tight end may be enjoying a great season. But with both of them together on the same roster, they feel too redundant.
“No, I don’t subscribe to that,” Arthur Smith said. “I mean, we just need to get more possessions and get off the losing track that we’ve been on the last two weeks. Usually when you get into the flow of it and get more possessions and you’re converting third downs, there are going to be more opportunities for everybody. That’s the way it goes.”
This coming offseason, the Steelers will need to decide if they agree with Arthur Smith or if they need to move one of the two tight ends.