Master of everything Steelers need splash plays, and Fitzpatrick is ready to make them
You name it, Minkah Fitzpatrick has lined up there. Free safety. Strong safety. Slot. Outside corner. Inside linebacker. Outside linebacker. Every position but down lineman.
“No,” defensive coordinator Teryl Austin corrected. “A couple years ago, he did put his hand on the ground.”
It would not be appropriate to call Fitzpatrick, the Steelers’ three-time All-Pro safety, a jack of all trades. Usually, that expression intones being a master of none. Fitzpatrick is the antithesis. He masters everything he does.
That’s why the Steelers line him all over the field, putting him in spots where it is necessary to have a GPS to find him. That, of course, is the idea. Make the offense, specifically the quarterback, wonder where he is and what he’s going to do next.
Fitzpatrick is the ultimate football chameleon. He is tough enough to play inside the box and fast enough to run with receivers. He can track a football the way a meteorologist tracks a storm and has authored more big plays than a Broadway playwright.
“It’s how instinctive he is, understanding what’s about to happen,” said cornerback Patrick Peterson, a former eight-time Pro Bowl selection and three-time All-Pro. “He has just a knack for the ball.”
Peterson had the good fortune to play with two All-Pro safeties when he was with the Arizona Cardinals — Adrian Wilson, who holds the franchise record for sacks by a safety (25.5); and Tyrann Mathieu, who has 30 career interceptions in 11 NFL seasons. He said he’d put Fitzpatrick in a category with Mathieu, but indicated he can be a mixture of both.
“He has a great combination of Adrian Wilson because he’s going to bang you, he can deliver a good blow; and Tyrann Mathieu with the ball skills, having the ability to take the ball away,” Peterson said.
That, however, is the funny thing about Minkah Fitzpatrick.
The Steelers are five games into the season and the six-year safety doesn’t have anything more than tackles to his name. He does not have an interception, a touchdown return, a fumble recovery, even a forced fumble. While that is not cause for alarm, not this early in the season, it is a rare splashless start for a player who already has 19 interceptions and five scoring returns in his career.
The only other time in his short career when that happened in the first five games was 2021. Fitzpatrick ended that season with just two interceptions and no touchdowns.
“I’m happy just being out there on the field,” Fitzpatrick was saying the other day before practice. “Big plays come when they come. I don’t think I really had any opportunities to have big splash plays. It’s not like I’ve been missing them. It’s just having the opportunity. When they come, they come.”
None of this, of course, is to suggest Fitzpatrick is standing around and doing nothing. He leads the Steelers with 41 tackles, something typically not seen from a free safety whose typical job description has him lining 15 to 20 yards from the line of scrimmage. What’s more, while it is not quantifiable by any statistical measure, the confusion and angst he creates for opposing quarterbacks by lining everywhere on the field is no doubt real and palpable.
But because the splash plays to which we have grown accustomed have not yet materialized, there are those who think Fitzpatrick must be off to a slow start, as though he is having an off-year. After all, as the second-highest paid safety in the league at an annual average salary of $18.247 million, he is compensated handsomely to make those plays.
Just don’t tell that to Mike Tomlin.
“Minkah’s going to make his plays,” Tomlin said. “There are blocks of games in the past maybe where T.J. (Watt) is not getting sacks. T.J. is going to get sacks. Minkah’s going to make splash plays. That’s what All-Pros do.”
So now the question becomes: Is Fitzpatrick making fewer splash plays because he is being used in so many different roles? Should the Steelers have Fitzpatrick stay put at free safety, play like a center fielder, and not move him around as though he is a piece of dining-room furniture?
“We’re always conscious of where we put guys in position to make plays,” Austin said. “Right now, you go through — I don’t want to call it a drought — but there are times when the ball isn’t coming your way. But I have every confidence Minkah is going to get around a few balls sooner or later.
“That’s always a juggling act. He’ll be able to get his plays. Sometimes it’s just the law of averages that slows him down a little bit, I believe, because I know what kind of football player he is — that he’s going to start getting his hands on the ball and making the splash that we need.”
For now, the Steelers have relied on touchdown returns by Watt and Alex Highsmith against Cleveland and Miles Killebrew’s blocked punt for a safety against the Baltimore Ravens. And, based on the performance of the offense, it appears the Steelers are going to need to lean on that even more from their defense.
And that’s where Fitzpatrick will come in. After all, that’s the reason they traded a No. 1 pick for him in 2019 when Ben Roethlisberger sustained a seasonending injury in Week 2 — they wanted to strengthen their defense with a playmaker because they knew their offense would struggle to score points without their future Hall of Fame quarterback. The Steelers have adopted the same mentality now, though they would be hesitant to publicly admit it.
“I think teams are focusing more on their defense because they realize the importance of it, because the offense, no matter how good you are, isn’t going to always score 30 points a game,” Fitzpatrick said. “If the other team doesn’t score and you score two or three touchdowns and a couple field goals, you’re going to win the game.
“That’s how we’re built for sure — stopping the other team from scoring and getting the ball in our offense’s hands as much as we can so they have as much opportunity to score. I guess that might be becoming a more common thing across the league.”
Getting the ball in Fitzpatrick’s hands would solve a lot of problems. That is something that has been common, as well.