A game defined by tight ends? Try Colts-Steelers Week 9

PITTSBURGH -- Steelers offensive coordinator Arthur Smith answered a question with a question Thursday morning.

What makes Indianapolis Colts tight end Tyler Warren so unique and effective?

"Are you saying he's the best Penn State tight end in the league," Smith deadpanned.

Smith knows a thing or two about tight ends, and he especially knows about Penn State tight ends. For the past two years, Smith has coached Pat Freiermuth, Warren's predecessor in State College, and coordinated an offense that has seen Freiermuth score nine touchdowns and average 10.5 yards per reception. Meanwhile in Indianapolis, Warren is making a splash in his first season in the league. The first-round pick leads the Colts with 492 receiving yards and has three touchdowns, scoring one each in three of the last four games.

But each team is more than just its Penn State tight end. According to TruMedia, the Colts and Steelers are the most frequent users of lineups through eight weeks consisting of one running back and three tight ends (13 personnel); 13% of the Steelers' offensive plays have been in this formation; 12.7% for the Colts. The Baltimore Ravens (12%) are the only other team over 10%.

Warren is fourth among tight ends in team target share at 20.3%, while the Steelers lead the league in targeting their tight ends on 33.5% of their pass attempts.

And it's not just that the Colts and Steelers frequently use tight ends that makes them unique, but the versatility in how their offenses deploy them.

Once primarily used as extra blockers and secondary, often shallow options in the passing game, tight ends have evolved to being used all over the field. Freiermuth ranks third among TEs in vertical routes (26.1% of his routes), while teammate Jonnu Smith ranks fourth (25.5%) and Warren is eighth (24.3%), according to TruMedia.

"It definitely changed a lot," Steelers veteran safety Jabrill Peppers said of tight ends. "You got the faster, shiftier guys now they still have the guys who block. We usually call those the Y tight ends, but the U tight ends are kind of taking a league by storm now. They can get in bigger personnel, spread you out and you got some mismatches with the backers. Or if they like to match up on the safety, a tall, athletic tight end provides that.

"It definitely shifted. But defense has shifted too. It's kind of positionless. You've got to be capable of doing a lot of different things and not just one job. It's a give and take."

Sunday's matchup (1 p.m. ET, CBS) is a tight end aficionado's dream, and it's a game that will largely be defined by each team's tight ends -- and the opposing defense's ability to defend them.

How the Colts utilize tight ends

Indianapolis coach Shane Steichen's affinity for using tight ends developed early in his NFL career. Back then, he was a young assistant in the Chargers organization in the mid-2010s, putting him in proximity to one of the game's greatest tight ends.

"It started when I was with the Chargers and Antonio Gates," Steichen said this week. "It was just phenomenal. We'd always try to find ways to scheme him up and get him his touches as much as we could."

Since then, Steichen has grown into one of the sharper offensive minds in the game, a playcaller who is on a perpetual search for optimal matchups. Oftentimes, it's the tight end who helps create them.

And not since those days spent with Gates has Steichen had a tight end like Warren.

"Anytime you've got a guy that can [line up] inline, outline, split out wide... [there are] certain matchups you find in zone [and] same thing in man coverage," he said.

To that end, watching Warren play offers a smorgasbord of offensive tactics. Warren, who leads all tight ends in receiving yards (492), has lined up all over the field: 58% of his snaps have been as a traditional inline tight end, but 10% have been in the backfield, 10% as an outside receiver and 22% in the slot.

Relatedly, Warren has been used frequently as a fullback, with four rushing attempts and a goal-line score. He has even attempted a pass, though it ended up being a throwaway out of the end zone. Not to be overlooked is the role that veteran Mo Alie-Cox will play. He's an accomplished blocker and often helps unlock some of running back Jonathan Taylor's biggest runs.

"It's fun to play tight end in [this offense] and do a lot of different things with Shane and what he calls," Warren said.

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How can the Steelers stop Warren?

There might not be a worse time for the Steelers to be tasked with stopping a prolific tight end.

Not only did the defense give up 143 yards and two touchdowns on seven receptions to the Green Bay Packers' Tucker Kraft in their Week 8 outing, but now they have to scheme for Warren without safety DeShon Elliott after he hyper-extended his knee against the Packers. A hard-hitting safety, Elliott was a key cog to the Steelers' tight end defense in the five games he played this season.

To help replace Elliott, the Steelers traded for Patriots safety Kyle Dugger, but because Dugger joined the team on Thursday, he'll still be getting up to speed on the Steelers defense.

"Obviously losing DeShon will make it harder, but that's the NFL," Pittsburgh defensive coordinator Teryl Austin said. "We have to be able to, whoever's in the game, be available and be ready to give our best effort to stop this guy. And that's the job. We don't make excuses for guys that aren't there and maybe that's why we didn't defend him. That's not what we're going to do. We're going to go out there, and we're going to do our best to stop him."

To this point, the Steelers' best effort hasn't been good enough against the league's tight ends. In their Week 7 loss to the Bengals, Cincinnati's Noah Fant caught all four targets for 44 yards and a touchdown, while in the Week 3 win against the Patriots, New England's Hunter Henry diced up the Steelers and led his team with 8 receptions on 11 targets for 90 yards and two scores.

Henry's success came largely as he chipped T.J. Watt and then leaked out into his route. Delayed recognition by the defense, miscommunication and, in some cases, schematic decisions led to Henry being wide open over and over again.

"There are certain things that we'll do where we say, listen, when that chip happens, we say send a guy and try to get to the quarterback before he has an opportunity to get out," Austin said. "That's some calculated risk that sometimes we'll take.There were some times that he was open, and a couple things where the two touchdowns he had were both, we had some coverage issues. It wasn't that he was just spectacular in terms of running great routes and all that other stuff. That was a good scheme, they got us on that."

The Colts offense, though, is positioned to further capitalize on the Steelers' defensive weaknesses. Daniel Jones gets the ball out quick, something that the last two opposing offenses have done to mitigate the Steelers' once-vaunted pass rush. And while the Steelers have given up a number of explosive plays, including several to tight ends, offenses have also had success in getting yards after the catch because of poor tackling. Kraft picked up 131 of his 143 yards after the catch and averaged 18.7 yards doing so. Warren, meanwhile, enters Sunday's matchup averaging 7.9 yards after the catch.

"We pride ourselves on being a good tackling team, a physical team, and when you look at that, I mean that can be demoralizing, and it was," Austin said of his team giving up 251 yards after the catch to the Packers. "The big thing is, hey, what are we doing in practice -- because we are not going to be tackling at this point in the season -- what are we doing drill-wise? What are we doing during the periods, the team periods to try to help our guys get themselves in position to make the tackles.

"I don't think it's a lack of effort. I don't think it's anything like that. We're not tackling well, not right now."

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What's the Steelers tight end philosophy?

Consider Smith a fan of quality and quantity when it comes to tight end usage.

Not only is Freiermuth second in the team's receiving yards with 200 on 16 receptions, but Smith's 29 targets makes him the Steelers' second-most targeted offensive player. Then there's the Steelers' "Shaq in the post" option: 6-foot-7, 300-ish-pound behemoth tight end Darnell Washington, who has 84 receiving yards and a touchdown on nine receptions out of 16 targets. And rounding out the group is Connor Heyward, an undersized tight end/fullback hybrid used as the designated ball carrier in the Steelers' two tush push attempts.

Thanks to that versatility, the Steelers have had success matching up against different styles of defense throughout the season in games against Minnesota, Cleveland and Cincinnati.

"We have some unique chess pieces, guys that can play in the core, guys that can play out in space," Smith said.

"It's all logistics, stuff we have been training since the spring and how you build it. If you're just static, you can't play that way, you're wasting time in spring or in Latrobe. Those guys have done a fantastic job."

One of Smith's most unique chess pieces is Washington, who has both size and can move out in space. Used somewhat sparingly in his first two seasons since being selected in the third round of the 2023 draft, Washington has been a key in both the run game as an extra blocker alongside similarly versatile lineman Spencer Anderson and in the red zone as a mismatch nightmare for defensive backs.

"I have lots of fun with Art Smith," Washington said. "Different locations, line up anywhere and you could run any play. So personally, I have lots of fun in it, and I enjoy it."

How will the Colts counter?

Colts defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo still remembers the days when you could match up a linebacker against the average tight end and sleep well at night.

Those days are over.

"Those guys are such big, skilled athletes these days and they just seem to be more and more and more," he said. "... Very, very rarely these days do you see a linebacker matched up on a tight end anymore."

That makes for a pretty big challenge when playing a Steelers team that can and does deploy as many as three tight ends in the same formation. It also doesn't help that the Colts have been besieged by injuries in their secondary since training camp and are still undermanned.

But the secondary will draw the assignment, Anarumo said.

"You're going to have to deploy [defensive backs] whether it be a corner or safety in some matchups to try to guard these guys," he said. "And then Pittsburgh, in particular, they've got four of them."

Look for the Colts to counter with a few creative lineups of their own, to the extent that they can. One such lineup they use frequently features a single linebacker and three safeties.

Slot cornerback Kenny Moore II is also a good option and should expect to be involved. He is a versatile defender who plays much bigger than his size and often draws unique matchups.

"Tight ends in this league, they've become wide receivers," Moore said.

Meanwhile, the Colts are also wary of the role the Steelers' tight ends will play in the running game.

"They all block, too," linebacker Zaire Franklin said. "That's one of the biggest things -- they all put their nose in and get after it."

And that's part of what gives the Steelers the upper hand in their usage of tight ends.

"When you think this guy may be going out for a pass," Moore said, "he's just blocking on this play."