It was posited as a joke to Pittsburgh Steelers tight ends coach Alfredo Roberts that his team — for maybe even just one snap, at least — achieves the proverbial Holy Grail for tight ends across the world.

The “0-5” personnel.

“Oh-five?!” an eavesdropping quarterbacks coach Tom Arth said. “Don’t give ‘Fredo’ any ideas!”

OK, so maybe the Steelers never will, in fact, deploy the “0-5” — the term using common football parlance for five tight ends on the field at once (the first digit represents the number of running backs and the second tight ends in a personnel package for a given play). But the Steelers tight ends corps is deep enough and of enough quality that offensive coordinator Arthur Smith hasn’t been afraid to make the Steelers the only team in the NFL so far this season to use “14” personnel.

According to sumersports.com, the Steelers have used Pat Freiermuth, Darnell Washington, MyCole Pruitt and Connor Heyward all on the field at once for six snaps.

“Honestly, that’s the first time I have done it in my life, the 14,” Heyward said this week, days after he and three of his position mates were on the field together multiple times during a victory against the New York Giants. “I’ve seen the 13, the 22 personnel, but not 14.

“It’s just a lot of different varieties and dressing it up in different ways so that (the defense) can’t lock in on this receiver or that tight end. Just trying to mix and match.”

The Steelers are using multiple tight end sets more than any team in the league — for nearly half their offensive snaps (44.7%). Consider that there are 10 teams that have not run a single play this season with even so much as “13” (three tight ends) personnel.

The Steelers have done that a league-high 18% of the time. And all of these numbers might even be higher if Pruitt hadn’t missed four of the season’s first eight games because of a knee injury.

“We are able to do a lot of different things in the passing game from 11 personnel through 13 personnel,” Roberts said after pointing out the occasional 14 usage. “We have flexibility because of guys like Connor and MyCole and Darnell and Pat, so we can line them all up inside and outside and do fun things with them.”

Steelers tight ends have combined to play 905 snaps and catch 43 passes for four touchdowns this season. That rivals the playing time and production of the wide receivers corps, which has 66 catches and four touchdowns among 1,179 combined snaps.

It’s hard to imagine there have been too many NFL teams in recent decades in which tight ends on aggregate are getting a 43%/57% split of the playing time in an offense compared to their WR teammates. However, Smith came to the Steelers this season with that reputation.

No team in the NFL last season used multiple tight end sets more often than the Atlanta Falcons, for whom Smith served as head coach and play-caller.

“It was anticipated with Arthur coming in with some of the things that’s he’s done with Tennessee (where Smith was previously coordinator) and Atlanta,” Roberts said. “So he really put a lot of stress on (the Steelers tight ends) as far as learning and in learning a lot of different positions. And the growth (among the Steelers tight ends) has been phenomenal.”

The 6-foot-7 Washington, according to Pro Football Focus, leads NFL tight ends in pass-block snaps. Pruitt, Heyward and Freiermuth also rank among the top 60 tight ends in the league in regards to how often they are asked to block on passing plays.

In the receiving game, three tight ends caught at least one pass during the Steelers’ most recent game. Collectively, the unit has caught an impressive 82.7% of the passes thrown their way this season.

“I feel like we have even more that we don’t show,” Heyward said. “But we love going out there together, and we feel like when it’s all four of us, it’s, ‘All right; we gotta get it done, all the tight ends out there, whether that’s run, pass.’

“We feel like that’s always been our strength that our room can do a lot of different things. We have a lot of different skill sets.”

There is one final frontier, though, for what might be the NFL’s deepest tight ends room. Some teams (including the Steelers of the recent past) often carry only three tight ends on the roster. The 2024 Steelers, including special-teams standout Rodney Williams, have five on their 53-man.

Williams has played five snaps on offense this season. Could it ever be possible to see him line up with the quarterback, five offensive linemen… and his four position mates?

“Oh-five, 0-5, 0-5!” Heyward said, giddy with laughter. “We might have to get to that. That’d be cool if we could do that.

“But I don’t think (running backs) Najee (Harris) or Jaylen (Warren) are coming out any time soon. That’s OK, though.”

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