Steelers 4 Downs: After 1-year hiatus, is Minkah Fitzpatrick back to playing at an All-Pro level?

1. Ode to Minkah

Minkah Fitzpatrick was honored as a first-team AP NFL All-Pro during his first two seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Last year, though, Fitzpatrick went without any hardware.

Fitzpatrick’s play in 2022 gives reason to believe he again will be in consideration for All-Pro honors.

Only three players have more interceptions than Fitzpatrick’s four, and only three safeties have more passes defensed than his eight.

The deeper analytics paint Fitzpatrick even more kindly. NFL’s Next Gen Stats calculate “ballhawk rate” via adding interceptions and other passes defensed and dividing it by passes in which the intended receiver was closest to a particular defender. Fitzpatrick has a 22.6% “ballhawk rate” since he entered the league in 2018, which is second-best in the NFL. His -59.0 overall expected points added when targeted is fourth-best in the league in that time.

Pro Football Focus’ more subjective grades rate Fitzpatrick as the best safety in the NFL this season, grading him among the 50 safeties who have played the most snaps in 2022 as the best in coverage, the sixth-best against the run and the sixth-best tackler. PFF’s data says Fitzpatrick has missed only three tackles this season, and his missed-tackle rate of 4.8% is ninth-best among safeties in the league.

2. Knowing Najee

Najee Harris has spent most of the season ranked at or near the bottom of the NFL’s running backs by the advanced analytics tracked by Next Gen Stats. But Harris’ Week 13 effort was one of Next Gen Stats’ best by a running back.

Next Gen measures running back performance via “rushing yards over expected” (RYOE). In last week’s Steelers win at the Atlanta Falcons, Harris had the sixth-most RYOE (15) of any player in the league in Week 13, the eighth-most on a per-carry basis (0.9).

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That continues an upward trend in that category for Harris since the bye week. In the four games since, Harris has had three of his best RYOE outputs of the season. He has accumulated plus-7 RYOE since the bye — after having a minus-93 in the eight games prior to it.

Harris’ first half of the season was so poor that he still ranks last in the league in aggregate RYOE (minus-86), but in per-carry average, he has climbed up from last to fourth-from-last.

3. Keep left

Footballoutsiders.com tracks passes by the region of the field to which they were intended — left, middle, right; deep and shallow. It then calculates the effectiveness of an offense or defense at completing/defending such passes via its DVOA (defense-adjusted value over average) metric.

Defensively, the Steelers are average overall in DVOA against the pass: 15th in the 32-team NFL. They are eighth on passes to the right, 22nd on passes down the middle — but have the second-best pass defense to the left, as measured by Football Outsiders’ all-encompassing stats, in the league. They are also the second best on passes to the “deep left.”

Does this mean anything? Is it a coincidence? The Steelers list their best cornerback, Cameron Sutton, as the starter at right cornerback (the right side of the defense is the left side of the offense), for what it’s worth.

4. Losing the WR battle

Even before the trade of Chase Claypool last month, the Steelers’ production from the wide receiver position was lacking. In aggregate production, it remains among the worst in the NFL. The three receiving touchdowns from Steelers wide receivers this season is the fewest any team’s WR corps has produced.

But did you know the Steelers on defense have been among the worst in defending opposing wide receivers?

Steelers opponents have gotten 15 touchdowns and 2,220 receiving yards from their wide receivers. Only two teams have allowed more WR TDs, and only three have allowed more WR yards.