After Minkah Fitzpatrick was traded because he didn’t like Miami’s role, the former Dolphin is complaining about his role in Pittsburgh.
This past summer, former Miami Dolphins safety Minkah Fitzpatrick experienced a strange change of heart. A player that was well known for his versatility for his entire college career suddenly didn’t want to be versatile anymore — as Fitzpatrick (and his mother) aired grievances that the Dolphins were misusing him by rolling him into the box to play run defense and man to man coverage against tight ends.
The issues became so bad that Fitzpatrick, after Miami started the season 0-2 and was blown out of their first two contests, was traded (by his request) to the Pittsburgh Steelers for a 1st-round pick in the 2020 NFL Draft.
Fitzpatrick would go on to make the Pro Bowl for the first time in his young NFL career — but experienced a significant drop off in production over the second half of the season. Why? Because the Steelers were committed to playing Fitzpatrick as their free safety in the middle of the field instead of using his versatility to move him around and keep him active in the game plan each week.
But hey, that’s what Fitzpatrick wanted, right?
Well, apparently not. Fitzpatrick has, first with The Athletic and now with ESPN’s Brooke Pryor, started a public campaign this offseason to air his complaints that the Steelers didn’t move him around enough to keep him engaged in the game plan.
“I don’t want to see that drop-off,” said Fitzpatrick, via Brooke Pryor of ESPN.com. “You know what I’m saying? I wanted to continue to have that impact on my team and have that impact on games. Because it’s no fun when you’re in a critical moment and you can’t do nothing about it. When you move around and you’re a moving piece on the chessboard, it’s hard to defend and you can’t just say, ‘All right, the quarterback is going to look at me and say he’s going to be in this spot every snap,’ like I was last year. It’s going to be harder and it’s going to be more difficult to take me out of the game.”
That’s a very stark difference to the soundbite Fitzpatrick provided in late October when these two teams were set to face off against one another.
“I am comfortable on the field. (The Steelers) just allowed me to play fast and do what I do,” said Fitzpatrick. “That is the thing I like about here — we run what we run, and we run it well. We don’t try to do too much, don’t try to change it up week to week.”
So now, magically, 14 games after living the life he complained he didn’t have in Miami, Fitzpatrick wants to return to a versatile role because the Steelers couldn’t keep him around the football down the stretch?
That’s a whole lot of waffling for four months. Perhaps the more likely explanation is that Fitzpatrick saw the writing on the wall in Miami — that this season was going to be a bad one? And instead of buckling down, he wanted to go somewhere where he wouldn’t have to endure the misery Miami seemed destined for? The irony here is that both the Dolphins and the Steelers finished the season 5-4 in their final 9 games. The only difference? Miami went 3-2 in December — while the Steelers stumbled and finished 2-3, missing the playoffs in the process.
So while Fitzpatrick can continue to casually throw his coaches under the bus, Miami can rest easy and know it actually wasn’t their fault that Fitzpatrick requested a trade back in September — he just feels he has to have his cake (production) and eat it (win), too.
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