The Pittsburgh Steelers have been one of the most polarizing teams in fantasy football over the last decade. Stars like Le’veon Bell and Antonio Brown have come through this offense in the past; and now there seems to be a second wave of budding stars in the making – whether it’s Najee Harris, or one of their trio of great wide receivers. That being said, who would be the wide receiver to target in this offense?
JuJu Smith-Schuster
Is it possible to be both a fantasy football star and a Tik Tok star at the same time? I’m not convinced. Since Antonio Brown’s departure, JuJu Smith-Schuster has averaged just 49.4 receiving yards per game in 28 games over the last two seasons. Beyond this, with the addition of Chase Claypool and Diontae Johnson emerging, JuJu averaged a career low 8.6 yards per reception – where his previous low was 12.8.
Could it just be a small sample size? Probably not, as he played all 16 games. He also had the second most targets of his career with 128 (8 per game). This seems to be more a product of playing with two guys who may just be better, and are still both emerging. That is another reason to stay away from Juju this year.
JuJu is entering his fourth season and is no longer ascending; with two down seasons after a breakout sophomore campaign. Meanwhile, teammate Chase Claypool is entering his second season and Diontae Johnson is entering his third season.
These second and third seasons are prototypically the “breakout” year for wide receivers. All of this with JuJu descending gives him a low ceiling, and a low chance of retaking that ‘top dog’ role in this offense. JuJu may be the cheapest of the bunch, but has little to no ceiling compared to some of the other players.
Still don’t believe me? Matt Harmon’s Reception Perception has something to say. Reception Perception is a tool used to chart how well receivers get open – which takes out the quarterback and offense as a whole. It shows how effective a player is regardless of situation. Here are JuJu‘s charts:
The chart on the left shows how successful JuJu was on each route run in 2020. The chart on the right shows how often he ran each route. Green means he was above the NFL average in success on a route, yellow means around average, and red means below average success.
JuJu was below average on six of his nine routes. To add to this, Matt Harmon also charts how well each receiver does beating man, press, and zone relative to every wide receiver he has charted since 2014. The higher the percentile, the better the finish historically.
To add to the argument against JuJu, he placed in the 4th percentile since 2014 in beating man coverage, and was in the 6th percentile beating press coverage. He was more serviceable against zone, placing in the 72nd percentile; but overall the numbers look poor, and not someone you want on your fantasy football team.
Chase Claypool
I promise there is much more positivity here. First of all, Chase Claypool is a FREAK of an athlete. 6’4 238 pounds, runs a 4.42 40-yard dash, 99th percentile speed score, and 91st percentile burst score, per PlayerProfiler. You could not ask for much more of a specimen type athlete.
He scored nine receiving touchdowns last year on the back of 109 targets and 62 catches, while tallying two rushing touchdowns. Leading your team in touchdowns as a rookie is not too shabby. All the signs point to a second year breakout, but I’m not totally convinced because of his situation.
The biggest thing that scares me is Ben Roethlisberger‘s arm. In 2020, Big Ben averaged his lowest yards per pass attempt of his entire career with 6.3. His previous low since 2008 was 7.3, which is a whole yard above what he did last year. This is also the same guy coming off of career threatening elbow surgery in 2019, and is now heading into his age 39 season. Before you yell at your screen that Big Ben’s inefficiency affects all of them (there is truth to that), there is no one it effects more than Chase Claypool.
Since Claypool is their biggest, strongest, and potentially fastest receiver, it resulted in him receiving the highest yards per target on the team with 7.9. JuJu had 6.5 yards per target, and Diontae Johnson had 6.4 YPT. The noodle arm of Big Ben is also shown in catchable target percentage, where Claypool was 90th in the NFL – JuJu and Diontae placed 41st and 65th respectively. This is not to say Claypool can not succeed, but he is most affected by his quarterback deteriorating opposed to his two cohorts.
Because of his athleticism, expected improvement, and oozing potential, I don’t mind taking a flier on Claypool, but in his current situation, he is just not the Steelers wide receiver I want.
Diontae Johnson
Diontae Johnson is the Steelers’ wide receiver you want on your team regardless of price. Heck, this is the player you want on all of your fantasy football teams, especially with where he is going in drafts right now.
Johnson had a slow-ish start to the 2020 season. He played well in his first two weeks, but would have a concussion, back sprain, and a bye week that slowed him down. But from weeks 6-17, Diontae Johnson was the WR7 in half PPR leagues. If you take out week 6 where he missed a game, he was the WR6 in half-PPR from week 7-17. Not bad for the guy going as the consensus WR39 in preseason ADP. When he was healthy (which was most of the season), he produced. Not convinced? Reception Perception has once again entered the chat:
Diontae Johnson was an absolute revelation in Matt Harmon’s Reception Perception. He finished in the 95th percentile among all WRs in beating man coverage since 2014, the 96th percentile while beating zone, and the 86th percentile beating press coverage. He also beat double teams 87% of the time and had an 81.3 percent contested catch rate. What can’t this guy do?
Did I mention the fact that he had 144 targets last year? I hear you Najee Harris truthers, the Steelers will run the ball more this season – so I dug a little deeper.
The Steelers have finished in the top-2 in the NFL in pass attempts three of the last four years. The only year they didn’t was when Big Ben played just two games. But wait, there’s more!
Since 2013, the Steelers lowest average pass attempts per game in a season was 36.4. Multiply that by Diontae’s 22.9% full season target share and that comes out to be 133.4 targets at worst, which is not far from the 144 he had last year. That 22.9% includes the three games where he played 24%, 8%, and 0% of the snaps, so the target volume should not go away anytime soon.
I know you’ve been waiting for me to talk about the drops. and here we are…
Diontae had between 10-12 drops last year depending on the site you ask, but I’m not too concerned. Diontae was 16th in the NFL in true catch rate as a rookie, having three drops on 92 targets. Of course, his 12 drops on 144 targets coming out to an 8.3% drop rate is not ideal; but I’m going to bet on the guy who was a top-7 WR from week 6 on, while having as many drops as he did.
Conclusion
Diontae Johnson is the guy you want in fantasy football from this Steelers’ wide receiver group. His low target depth plays into Big Ben’s declining arm, and the volume does not seem to be going away anytime soon. He is a steal at his current fantasy football ADP on every site, and should be a target of everyone in every single draft you do regardless of format. JuJu Smith-Schuster is someone I would try to stay away from, and Chase Claypool is worth a flier, but there is only one true answer for who you want from this offense. Draft Diontae Johnson!
