Top 10 tight-ends in the 2021 NFL Draft

#2 2021 NFL Draft Prospect: Pat Freiermuth (Penn State)

6' 5", 250 pounds; JR

Pat Freiermuth

When Mike Gesicki entered the NFL draft in April of 2018, the Nittany Lions lost a ton of production – over 1200 yards and 14 TDs over his final two years. Nut once they saw Pat Freiermuth hit the field, they knew the tight-end position was in good hands.

A former top-ten recruit at the position nationally, Pat Freiermuth caught 26 passes for 368 yards and eight touchdowns as a freshman. While the volume wasn’t quite there yet, you saw the incredible potential manifesting itself in 43 catches for 507 yards and seven scores in year two, making him a second-team All-Big Ten selection.

He had to have season-ending shoulder surgery four games into last year, but not before catching 23 passes for 310 yards and a touchdown, which in the Big Ten’s shortened season was good enough for first-team all-conference.

Pat Freiermuth was ready for the NFL the first time I saw him play. He has all the size and athleticism you want to see in a traditional tight-end. After spending 60% of snaps in-line in 2019, he was used detached from the line for 54.6% of the time last season, as the Nittany Lions moved him around a little more and targeted him heavily (27.8% of his team’s targets when he was available).

Freiermuth uses some hesitation releases or almost hop steps to set up routes. He doesn’t allow off-coverage defenders to read his hips that way and has good burst out of his breaks. You see that a lot on short out-routes, where he comes off the ball at about 70 percent and then creates separation as he plants that inside foot into the ground.

At the same time, he has the acceleration, to get defenders in trail positions on vertical patterns, while keeping that guy at his hip-pocket and not allowing him to get a hand on the ball. Freiermuth flashes head-fakes and jab steps that can absolutely leave safeties behind in the dust. He is graceful when going up in the air for the ball, with an immense catch radius and consistently attacks the ball at its highest point, leading to eight contested catches on 12 opportunities last season.

However, he also shows toughness going over the middle and taking hits, as well as strong hands, when he has a defender climbing over his back and trying to swipe the ball out. You see him pick up chunk plays on seam routes routinely, but also breaking to the corner or post. And he also quickly sits down when he becomes the hot receiver, when his man blitzes.

Freiermuth is violent when he has the ball in his hands and a defender is in his way. He has the lower body strength to break tackles and gain those extra couple of yards falling forward, runs with power and some aggression, as you see defenders bounce off him almost in a Rob Gronkowski-type of way.

A few things he has done to guys at the sideline, in the Maryland and Memphis games in particular, were straight up disrespectful. However, the Penn State TE got the 'Baby Gronk' label not only for what he does with the ball in his hands, but also in terms of somebody, who can move people in the run game as an in-line blocker.

Freiermuth was used a lot as an H-back, motioning across the formation for different blocking duties, especially securing the backside edge with sift blocks, but also leading up in the hole, where he can move second-level defenders backwards and keeps working up to the safeties without slowing down, if there’s nobody in his way.

He does a good job of walling of opponents away from the point of attack and shows relentless leg-drive when the ball is coming his way, plus he can legitimately combo on down-linemen with the tackle and then peel off to the backer effectively on counter-type runs. Freiermuth also does a good job of squaring up defenders on screen passes. He averaged nearly five yards per route run against man-coverage in 2020 – about two yards more than any other tight-end.

That’s despite running a bunch of quick flat routes from a wing alignment to defeat leverage against the closest linebacker. He had to deal with some really bad quarterback play, where he was left frustrated at times, especially when he was wide open curling up over the middle and the passes were way off.

Nevertheless, Freiermuth doesn’t have the type of wide receiver-like hands as you see with Florida State’s Kyle Pitts for example, as he had eight drops on 100 career catchable passes. He’s not a super-dynamic separator out of his breaks, often times rounding off his cuts. I don’t quite see the speed to stack defenders in the slot on vertical routes at the next level.

Moreover, he has to be a little more aware for when to sit down his routes against zone coverage. Freiermuth is still learning how to stay under better balance and find the right aiming points as a blocker, getting his weight out in front too much at this point. He also has to come down the line on flatter angles on sift blocks and aim at the near-shoulder, to not allow edge defenders to take the inside lane.

As strongly as I feel about Kyle Pitts as this unique matchup piece, that is worthy of a top-ten selection, I might be even more convinced that Freiermuth is the number two tight-end in this class.

He can operate out of the slot or split out wide in goal-line situations, to make use of his jump-ball capabilities, but he is easily the top true Y in this class. He probably won’t nearly be as productive year one as a pass-catcher, because guys at that position usually aren’t. But he should be a week one starter, who turns into a locomotive with the ball in his hands and displays great effort as blocker to give NFL offenses a boost.