In mid-September, the Steelers traded their 2020 first-round pick to the Dolphins for defensive back Minkah Fitzpatrick and a couple of third-day picks going each way. At the time, the story was more about the Dolphins unloading as much of their talent as they could to gain future draft picks, and whether the Steelers were nuts to give up their first-round pick next year when the need for a young, top-tier quarterback to eventually replace Ben Roethlisberger becomes more glaring every season — especially considering the elbow injury Roethlisberger suffered Week 2 against the Seahawks that cost him the rest of the 2019 season.
Pittsburgh lost that game to Seattle, 28-26, and that was after an opening week nightmare against the Patriots that set the team at 0-2. But there was something else that happened in the Seahawks loss that portended the Fitzpatrick trade: Seattle tight end Will Dissly caught two touchdown passes, and then-deep safety Sean Davis (who was subsequently placed on injured reserve with a shoulder injury) was highly vulnerable in deep coverage on both red-zone throws from Russell Wilson. Davis (No. 21) found it tough to align his coverage with rookie linebacker Devin Bush (No. 55), and Dissly (No. 88) had free movement through the Steelers’ defense.
It was something head coach Mike Tomlin and defensive coordinator Keith Butler had seen far too often in recent years. The team brought senior defensive assistant/secondary coach Teryl Austin on board before this season to shore things up, but Davis’ move from strong to free safety was very much a work in progress at the time of his injury, and of the Fitzpatrick trade. As it was the first time the Steelers had traded their first-round pick from the upcoming season since 1966, it definitely went against organizational type.
Per Pro Football Focus, Pittsburgh’s safety positions were an absolute mess in Weeks 1 and 2. Davis allowed two receptions on two targets for 30 yards and an opponent passer rating of 118.8. Terrell Edmunds allowed six receptions on eight targets for 74 yards, a touchdown and an opponent passer rating of 142.7. Kameron Kelly allowed three receptions on four targets for 111 yards, a touchdown and an opponent passer rating of 156.3. Not optimal, and something the Steelers were going to have to correct if they wanted half a shot at the playoffs this season.
So, when Pittsburgh traded for Fitzpatrick, the interesting thing about the deployment of their new player is how single-minded they were. Per Next Gen Stats, Fitzpatrick has lined up as a deep safety on 85% of his 238 coverage snaps. Both at Alabama and with the Dolphins, Fitzpatrick had been a far more versatile player. He played six different defensive back roles for the Crimson Tide — everything from blitz to deep safety — and for Miami in 2018, he played 23 snaps on the defensive line, 95 in the box, 166 at free safety, 281 at wide cornerback and 379 in the slot. The slot was where Fitzpatrick did his best work as a rookie last season; no other interior pass defender with at least 20% of his team’s snaps at that position allowed a lower opponent passer rating than Fitzpatrick’s 53.4. He allowed just 20 slot receptions on 39 targets for 200 yards, 111 yards after the catch, one touchdown and two interceptions.
With all this in mind, the extent to which Fitzpatrick has changed Pittsburgh’s pass defense as a pure deep safety is a revelation.
In his time with the Steelers, Fitzpatrick has allowed seven catches on 13 targets for 90 yards, four interceptions, no touchdowns and an opposing passer rating of 36.2. To put that into perspective, Earl Thomas is allowing an opposing passer rating of 32.9 in that same time period, with one interception and no touchdowns. Earl Thomas is the best safety of his generation, playing the deep third almost exclusively. Minkah Fitzpatrick is playing the majority of his reps at one of the NFL’s most difficult positions for the first time in his career, and he’s shutting down every opponent at a Pro Bowl level. He certainly did so against his old team in Week 8, with two of his four picks on the season.
Fitzpatrick’s pick-six against the Colts in Week 9 was an example of his ability to read quarterbacks on the fly and react quickly and accordingly. There’s 2:54 left in the first half, and Indianapolis is at the Pittsburgh 20-yard line. Backup quarterback Brian Hoyer is trying to fit the ball in to tight end Jack Doyle, and you can see Fitzpatrick adjust to Hoyer’s intentions. From there, it was 96 yards of green grass.
“I was just reading the quarterback,” Fitzpatrick said after the game. “He looked right first, then he looked hard left. His shoulders turned, so I just started drifting that way. He let go of the ball, and I just went and got it.”
This interception against the 49ers in Week 3 — Fitzpatrick’s first game after the trade — is a nice example of how he works in concert with his cornerbacks. Here, cornerback Joe Haden moves to leverage Jimmy Garoppolo’s throw to receiver Dante Pettis, and Fitzpatrick gets a “right place, right time” interception off Haden’s deflection. Earl Thomas has always had a knack for this, based on his ability to read the play and his closing speed, and this was a similar concept.
This is the dropped interception against the Chargers in Week 6. Here, Fitzpatrick plays the middle as Pittsburgh’s slot defenders invert to deep coverage. Philip Rivers may be thinking that Fitzpatrick is going to carry receiver Mike Williams up top, but cornerback Mike Hilton does instead. And when cornerback Cameron Sutton gives Keenan Allen a free release from the outside, it’s up to Fitzpatrick to slow-play the coverage to Williams, while lying in wait for the throw to Allen over the middle. Which he does adeptly, except for catching the ball.
Of course, deep safeties have to do more than simply provide coverage on the back third; they’re also tasked to use their quickness in space to blow up plays at or near the line of scrimmage. Back to Week 9 against the Colts, where the call is a quick flip to receiver Parris Campbell. Because Fitzpatrick reads the play quickly, takes the correct angle to the ball and presents Campbell with an impossible problem as a tackler, it’s a 1-yard gain.
And watch here how he moves through traffic to take down Indy’s Marlon Mack, one of the NFL’s best short-area backs. This is where his versatility playing at every area of the field comes in handy. Fitzpatrick may close like a free safety, but when it’s time to tackle, he thinks like a linebacker.
The Steelers currently rank sixth in Football Outsiders’ opponent-adjusted pass defense metrics; last season, they ranked 17th. The obvious difference is the acquisition of a player who fit what the team needed and the ability of Pittsburgh’s coaching staff to identify Fitzpatrick’s specific skill set in filling that need. If you’re still on the fence about the value Pittsburgh received and the loss of the first-round pick next year, ask yourself this: How easy is it to groom a dominant deep safety? How easy is it to identify those types of players in the draft? And where would the 2019 Steelers be without what Fitzpatrick brings to a defense that was entirely out of sorts before he arrived to shore up the secondary?
This franchise never blows up its future first-round picks for available NFL talent. That the Steelers did so in this case with very little hesitation tells you all you need to know about what they saw, and what the Dolphins missed, in Minkah Fitzpatrick.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar has also covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”
