Robert Tonyan Pat Freiermuth
Robert Tonyan Pat Freiermuth
Robert Tonyan is making a strong push to make the Steelers’ 53-man roster, and Pat Freiermuth welcomes another tight end. Now in his ninth NFL season, Tonyan is actually in familiar territory with former coaches and teammates. Or one teammate, anyway, Aaron Rodgers, even if he is getting along famously with all the quarterbacks.
In fact, even though Rodgers didn’t play in the first preseason game, Tonyan recorded 4 receptions for 61 yards. That included, at one point, three passes in a row from Will Howard, setting up a touchdown. Save for Kaden Wetjen’s 74-yard catch and run, he would have led all players in receiving yards in the game.
“It’s cool” to have Tonyan in the tight end room, Freiermuth told Teresa Varley for the Steelers’ website. “He’s an NFL vet. He’s been around a lot of guys. He trained with [George] Kittle in the offseason. He’s played with Trav [Travis Kelce]. Hearing his point of views of what they see on certain routes, it’s been cool to pick his brain”.
Formerly a college free agent, Robert Tonyan spent five seasons with the Packers. In his best season, he caught 52 passes for 586 yards and 11 touchdowns. But he never had another season like that, and he isn’t likely to again. Even if Jerricho Cotchery found a similar late-career touchdown renaissance with Ben Roethlisberger that one year.
Tonyan spent the entire 2025 season with the Chiefs, and thus worked with Kelce, the NFL’s all-time leading receiver among tight ends. Kittle is, of course, the player the Steelers were supposed to draft back in 2017 instead of Joshua Dobbs. But it’s okay though, because now they have Pat Freiermuth, Darnell Washington, and Robert Tonyan, “a great addition to the room”.
The Steelers deployed some addition by subtraction this offseason, aborting the Jonnu Smith experiment they undertook last year. Affiliated with former OC Arthur Smith, he slowed things down whenever he was on the field, which was too often. One hopes that this coaching staff’s connections to Tonyan bear more fruitful results. It should, because he doesn’t figure to play nearly as much as Smith did, and that’s already a good thing in comparison.
But what Robert Tonyan really brings to the table is a dependable veteran who has a built-in trust with the Steelers’ starting quarterback in the event that they need him. Say Freiermuth goes down and misses a few games. If nothing else, Rodgers knows he has a tight end who can run a full route tree and will be where he is supposed to be.