Regardless of what label you’d like to put on Connor Heyward positionally, he has started the 2023 preseason off strong as a versatile piece for Pittsburgh. Our team at Steelers Depot has highlighted this well, including own Josh Carney’s recent article and Terrible Take. Piggybacking off these thoughts, I wanted to look at this from a stats perspective today.
In the 2023 preseason opener, Heyward’s primarily alignment was at tight end, doing damage in the pass game in particular. Let’s look at Pro Football Focus’s (PFF) offense and receiving grades for tight ends in week one of the preseason:
Out of the 99 tight ends that appeared in week one of the preseason, Heyward was Pro Football Focus’ highest receiving (94.