What You Need to Know:

• Freiermuth ranked just 25th in target share among TEs last season, but his role grew after JuJu Smith-Schuster went down. Over the 1st 5 games, Freiermuth drew just 6.7% target share. His playing time increased to 60% in the 1st game after Smith-Schuster went down, though, and grew further after the Week 7 bye.
• From Week 6 on, Freiermuth garnered 15.1% target share. Chase Claypool tallied 16.5% over the same span (though they each missed 1 game, and not the same one).
• Freiermuth ranked just 27th among TEs in yards per catch. He tied for 36th in average depth of target among 44 TEs with 30+ targets, according to Pro Football Focus.
• The rookie ranked 27th in that group in slot rate and 40th in snap rate from an outside position. That means the majority of his opportunities came from a traditional, inline TE position. That plus an old QB with a deteriorating arm didn’t help Freiermuth’s yardage efficiency.
• At Penn State, Freiermuth ran 54.4% of his pass snaps from a slot position and tallied a 9.4-yard career ADOT. That’s pretty different from the 5.6 Pittsburgh limited him to in 2021.
• Freiermuth immediately claimed a significant red-zone role. He ranked 16th among all TEs in targets but tied for 13th at the position in end-zone targets.
• Pittsburgh’s passing volume helped. The Steelers ranked 4th in pass attempts and passed at the league’s 3rd highest rate. But Ben Roethlisberger also ranked 8th in red-zone pass attempts and 7th in pass attempts from inside the 10.
• The switch to either recycled Mitchell Trubisky or rookie Kenny Pickett at QB opens the question of whether we should expect less passing from the 2022 Steelers.
• The team has let #2 TE Eric Ebron walk from last year’s roster, adding Jace Sternberger from the open market and Connor Heyward via Round 6 of the draft. The Steelers list Heyward as a TE/FB. Heyward caught 96 career passes at Michigan State, converting to TE in his final season. His 2021 numbers: 35 catches, 326 yards, 2 TDs. HC Mike Tomlin called Heyward a “Swiss army knife” after the selection.

Draft Sharks Bottom Line:

Freiermuth enjoyed a nice debut season. The biggest questions for him in Year 2 will be: What does the offense look like with a new QB, and what does the reshaped pass-catching corps look like? Freiermuth figures to be a central factor regardless of the pieces around him. But those other pieces will affect things such as available opportunity and efficiency of the offense on whole. We’re betting on at least some decrease in team passing volume. What adds the most risk to Freiermuth in fantasy, though, is that early drafters like him inside the top 12. He certainly can finish there in Year 2, but we don’t see any reason to reach for the young Steeler rather than wait for some of the TEs we project ahead of him.