Pat Freiermuth

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• 2026 PreviewJul 3, 2026

  Pat Freiermuth 2026 Season Preview — what repeats, what doesn't

  Freiermuth finished TE24 across 15 games, averaging 6.2 half-PPR points per game in a Pittsburgh offense where his role sat below what his talent invites. His availability has been a consistent asset — 87.1% over five seasons — but a season built more on efficiency than on commanding target volume leaves the repeatable foundation thinner than that durability record suggests.

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  Show notes & transcript

  Five seasons into his career, Pat Freiermuth's per-game scoring has never left a three-point band — the floor is five and a half, the ceiling is 8.1, and last year landed at 6.2, right in the middle. The market prices him at tight end 30, pick one-94: the very bottom of the band. That's the whole episode — a player whose range is known, priced at its floor, in an offense that just got rebuilt by a play-caller famous for feeding tight ends.

  The season: 15 games, 41 catches on 54 targets — a 76 percent catch rate — for 486 yards and four touchdowns. 6.2 Half-PPR points a game, 20-seventh among tight ends per game, 20-fourth in total. 11 percent of Pittsburgh's targets in his games, in a room where Jonnu Smith's 54 targets and Darnell Washington's blocking split the position three ways. A division winner at 10-seven; a wild-card exit, 30 to six, to Houston.

  The career is the band: seven-six and seven-eight a game in years one and two, the injury-shortened five-five, the eight-one peak in 20-24 — 65 catches, seven scores — then last year's six-two. Five years, one identity: he catches what he's thrown at a mid-TE1 rate whenever the targets arrive, and the targets have never stayed.

  The pattern beat: targets are identity at this position — point-seven-two and point-eight-oh across the eras, n of 251 238 — and his 3.6 a game is the baseline stickiness defends. The band itself is the argument: no touchdown inflation anywhere in it, no outlier season begging to regress, just a range. When a player's whole history is a band and the price sits under the band's floor, the market is predicting something the file doesn't contain.

  What the market is predicting is the room, so here's the room, dated. Jonnu Smith was released in early March — 54 targets, unassigned. Darnell Washington got extended this offseason on starter money, per the reporting, and the beat expects his snaps to stay heavy. Robert Tonyan — who knows this scheme from Green Bay — signed as minicamp ended. The scheme is the headline: Mike McCarthy calls the plays now, and his offenses have a long, documented history of short-to-intermediate tight-end volume, per the previews. The Post-Gazette's beat writer said it plainly on Pittsburgh radio in early July: he expects Freiermuth to get a bigger share of the snaps this year — but it's going to be close, and both tight ends will play a lot. Add the quarterback: Aaron Rodgers, back for a farewell season, connected with Freiermuth in the June OTA passing periods, per the beat. Signed through 20-28; the club restructured him in May.

  The price: TE30 at pick one-94. The slot paid 5.8 last season; his career floor is five-and-a-half, his last season six-two. Our verdict: no call. The price sits at the bottom of the band and the band is real — but a three-way tight-end room run by a coach who also loves the other guy's blocking is exactly the kind of situation that keeps a band player at the bottom of his band, and we can't call a four-tenths gap a mistake. The caveat, warmly: Jonnu's 54 vacated targets, a tight-end-friendly play-caller, and a Hall of Fame quarterback's trust are all sitting there un-priced. If the snap share tips his way in September, TE30 becomes the cheapest TE1 path on the board.

  Watch the snap split with Washington — the beat says close, and close is the whole verdict — plus the 12-personnel rate under McCarthy and the red-zone pecking order. The band never moved in five years; the situation finally might. He's one of your guys? This show covers your whole roster — every player, every week, all season.