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Spotlight - TE Heath Miller, Pittsburgh Steelers

Posted on 7/20, exclusive to Footballguys.com

Mike Brown's Thoughts

Heath Miller was drafted in the first round by the Pittsburgh Steelers with the plan to make him the team's first legitimate passing option at tight end since Eric Green back in the mid-90's. Miller did not disappoint, immediately living up to the hype and then some by scoring six touchdowns in his first seven career games. While he had somewhat of a slow finish to his rookie season, he still finished with some of the best numbers a rookie tight end could possibly hope to finish with.

Heading into 2007, most expected Miller to build upon that rookie success and join the likes of the league's top talents at the position. But the offseason motorcycle accident and subsequent recovery of QB Ben Roethlisberger set the team back several months. And when he was once again on the shelf to begin the season, the team was even further behind. This may or may not have been the explanation as to why Miller's stats suffered somewhat. After all, if the early part of the season was when Pittsburgh was hurting the most, then how does one explain that his best game (101 yards and a touchdown) came in Week 1?

In any case, Miller's stats took a tumble in nearly every category.

• His receptions dipped from 39 to 34
• His yardage dropped from 459 to 393
• His touchdowns slid from 6 to 5

Was it fair to call the season a failure for Miller just because he failed to live up to the immense expectations he had for himself? Or was it unfair of everyone else to simply assume an increase in production? After all, there's nothing wrong with 393 yards and five touchdowns for a tight end in his second season on a run-first team. The problem is that so much more was expected out of him.

So heading into the 2007 season, do we try and justify it by explaining away the reasons for his drop-off and assume he'll return to his first round form? Or do we think maybe he was a bit overestimated after that rookie campaign and no longer expect him to join the league's elite?

Positives

• Has a great pedigree as a former first round pick. Without a ton of reliable receiving options on the Steelers, he is all but assured of putting up comparable stats to the past two seasons
• The Steelers have a new offense in place thanks to the departure of Ken Whisenhunt to Arizona. If the rumors were true about the Steelers looking to duplicate the Colts offense, that bodes very well for the tight end spot
• Due to the downturn in productivity, Miller won't likely be the hotshot player on anyone's cheat sheets this year. That means you can get him for much less than it would've taken to land him a year ago

Negatives

• Regardless of the reason, Miller's play fell off in nearly every offensive category last year (typically a season where most tight ends see their most significant uptick in production)
• The Steelers are still very much a run-first organization. (Wouldn't you be if you had Willie Parker?) This means that no matter how good Miller is, his ceiling is limited because A) He won't see a ton of passes, and B) He's not going to overtake Hines Ward as the top passing option
• He's got good hands and decent speed, but is no world-class physical marvel. He can get open as long as there are others around him to take the pressure off, but he rarely 'makes his own space'

Final Thoughts

I think the Pittsburgh offense will be much-improved in general, and I think Miller will see his best season stats totals yet. He's not going to suddenly vault himself into the Gates/Gonzalez/Heap territory just yet, and in all likelihood he'll never quite get to that level. But he proved to be a very good red zone/goal line option last year (three touchdowns from the goal line), and if the Pittsburgh offense improves (especially the passing game) then there could be many more than three goal line options for Miller to see this season. His overall numbers will be held down by the facts that there are other options in the passing game, namely Hines Ward and Santonio Holmes. And there is of course the aspect of the unknown with the Steelers hiring a first-time head coach so no one really truly "knows" what the offense is going to look like. But my guess is that he'll go with what has worked to this point, and add a few wrinkles of his own.

You don't sit behind the wheel of a Ford F-150 and try to go 0-80 in five seconds. In other words, for all the talk about the passing game and more finesse, Tomlin knows that this is still the Pittsburgh Steelers. We aren't going to see Miller flying around the field like Shannon Sharpe and hauling in 85 passes anytime soon. He'd do well to put up the kind of top-10 stats most of us felt we'd see from him a year ago. And if you can land him after ten tight ends are already off the board, consider it a success.

Quotations from the Message Board Thread

BigSteelThrill:
Miller certainly has the potential to be a bigger producer. But he does not get nearly enough targets/catches to do so. Even if the team throws more, Ward will get his and Holmes will likely get Burress type targets. Then you add in Wilson, Washington and Parker and his stats should not increase too much. His one up tick comes from rookie Matt Spaeth who is a big blocker and can relieve Miller of those duties.

rzrback77:
Pittsburgh has not used their TEs often lately. Heath Miller has only had 52 targets in 05 (3.25 per game) and 55 in 06 (3.4 per game). That is the bad news. The good news is that he has been efficient with his opportunities. He has caught 73% of his targets on his career. He has also averaged 11.7 ypc and has 11 career TDs. He has skills, but just needs more opportunity.

Speaking of opportunity, the rumor is that the Steelers will open up the offense more in 07 under the new regime. It has even been said that Miller will occasionally split out wide in a four wide set that they plan to use. The rest of the good news is that Miller's current ADP is TE #14 and 147 overall. You can grab him later in your draft.

He definitely has a higher floor than most of the TEs in his tier. He has ranked 11th and 13th among TEs in his two previous seasons even when he had very few targets. If the rumours are true, he could produce nice value.

PittsburghUnited:
Cowher took a great pass-catching college TE and turned him into a Steeler-mold TE (lots of blocking). I think he will return to his natural form this year. Plus, the early word out of training camp is that the TEs will definitely see more touches in this new offense. I'm thinking Miller will have a huge year.

Heath Miller Projections