Minkah Fitzpatrick: I would love to get a contract…

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The Steelers’ season came to an end on Sunday when the club fell to Kansas City 42-21. Now the team can begin to focus on offseason business, which could include locking up one of their key players in the secondary.

Safety Minkah Fitzpatrick is slated to play under his fifth-year option in 2022, which will pay him $10.6 million guaranteed. After Pittsburgh traded a first-round pick for him back in 2019, he’s the kind of player the club likely wants to keep around long-term.

Though no new deal has been reached to this point, Fitzpatrick is open to the possibility — while acknowledging it’s not entirely up to him.

“That’s not really on my terms,” Fitzpatrick said on Tuesday, via Ray Fittipaldo of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “I would love to get it done to guarantee the future and have it all done, but that’s up to the people upstairs when they want to get that done. There are some things they want to get done before they sign me. They have free agency coming up and all that stuff. That’s up to them.”

Teams do typically get through the offseason program before signing key players to extensions during the summer when things have calmed down. But sometimes it takes longer, as edge rusher T.J. Watt didn’t sign his contract extension until a few days before the start of the 2021 season.

Fitzpatrick had 124 tackles, seven passes defensed, two interceptions, a forced fumble, and a fumble recovery in 2021. Since coming over from Miami in 2019, he’s started 46 games for the Steelers and recorded 11 interceptions — two of which he’s returned for a touchdown — and 27 passes defensed.