an appearance on The Pivot<\/a>, Fitzpatrick said the Steelers failed to take advantage of his versatility, keeping him in a role where he became less impactful when quarterbacks started throwing away from where he was on the field.<\/p>\n\u201cIn Pittsburgh, I definitely regret the way I handled the situation. When I first got there, they just plugged me in at post safety, half safety. And I played well there. After awhile, quarterbacks aren\u2019t going to be throwing you the ball a whole lot,\u201d Fitzpatrick said. \u201cAnd I kind of got pushed into that role. People forgot that what I was known for, was my versatility and doing different things. I\u2019m a good football player, so no matter where you put me on the field, I\u2019m going to be a good football player. But I think where my capabilities are maximized is when I could do different things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fitzpatrick said he feels that the Steelers weren\u2019t getting the splash plays they wanted while paying him as one of the NFL\u2019s top safeties.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey got so used to me being in that role and doing a good job of it, that they didn\u2019t remember, or they didn\u2019t really care to move me around, so I just got stuck in that role,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd after awhile, my splash and production went down. I was still playing good football, but it wasn\u2019t splashy football. I was having to make tackles downfield after a busted run, and it\u2019s like \u2018Good job, but we paying you $18 million, we want to see splash.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that he wishes he would have had a conversation with the staff to try to change his role.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I kind of just bit the bullet,\u201d Fitzpatrick said. \u201cThey brought other guys in that couldn\u2019t move around and do different things.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an ironic twist, Fitzpatrick was traded for Jalen Ramsey, whom the Steelers viewed as a versatile piece to move around their defense. That\u2019s the role he played last year and figures to as well as in 2026, lining up in the slot and at safety and moving around a lot more than Fitzpatrick did.<\/p>\n
In Miami, Fitzpatrick began his career as a slot corner before the Steelers moved him to safety. Really, there was no reason for the team to move him around when he was leading the league in interceptions and creating takeaways. But it sounds like during or after that 2023 season, Fitzpatrick thought he was best suited to play a different role.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a fair assessment and he doesn\u2019t really seem to be assigning blame to the Steelers as much as he is himself for not bringing it up with the coaches. Quarterbacks did avoid throwing in his direction and he wasn\u2019t able to make big plays. Even his comment about having to chase down running backs isn\u2019t really a dig. His role was to be the last line of defense, and he registered 96 or more tackles every year except one from 2021-2024.<\/p>\n
Whether the Steelers would\u2019ve made an effort to transition Fitzpatrick into different roles if he had the conversation is worth wondering, but it\u2019s clear that he feels it would\u2019ve been beneficial for the defense. He was once a core piece of the unit, and the Steelers brought in pieces around what he could do, but that pigeonholed him in one role.<\/p>\n
Fitzpatrick feels he\u2019s going to be more versatile than he has been this season with the Jets, and it\u2019ll be interesting to see whether his production can tick back to what it was during his prime with the Steelers.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no arguing that he had a really good tenure with Pittsburgh, but things fizzled out rather quickly. Whether that would\u2019ve been the case had the Steelers used Fitzpatrick how he felt was best is something we\u2019ll never know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minkah Fitzpatrick had one of the best starts to his Steelers tenure of any defensive back in franchise…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":810933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[1322,1323,5702,349,99,129707,3795],"class_list":["post-810932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-miami-dolphins","tag-minkah-fitzpatrick","tag-new-york-jets","tag-nfl","tag-sports","tag-the-pivot","tag-trending"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}