It seems every offseason there becomes more and more player movement in the NFL. Between free agency, trades, the draft and players getting released, there’s an immense amount of fluctuation surrounding target-shares and how teams will distribute targets. The goal of this article is to evaluate what teams looked like in 2018 and what changes to expect in the upcoming season. Since there’s a wide variety of positions that can affect how touches are distributed, all aspects of rushing and/or receiving could be evaluated in a given piece. The NFL is a complicated beast but breaking it down piece-by-piece in this fashion can help lighten the load of evaluation.
Here’s how this piece will go. First, we’ll take a look at how things shook out in 2018. Focusing on targets, receptions and yards, and discuss any important factors involved that will be different in 2019. Then, we’ll take a look at the up-to-date depth chart for the 2019 season and make educated projections. Let’s dive in.
2018 PITTSBURGH STEELERS
Photo courtesy of profootballreference.com
2018 was a hot mess of confusion for the 2018 Pittsburgh Steelers skill position players. Between RB Le’Veon Bell choosing to sit out the season and WR Antonio Brown causing incredible chaos, the offense should’ve taken a big step down, but it didn’t! There was 5,174 passing yards to go around, which WR Juju Smith-Schuster, Brown, TE Vance McDonald, RB James Conner and TE Jesse James all feasted on. Beyond Smith Schuster and Brown, it was really difficult week-to-week to determine who was getting the targets, but the offense scored enough that throwing the secondary players in a lineup wasn’t a terrible move (for the most part). WR James Washington came into the NFL with big expectations. As a second rounder, Washington was expected to pick up where he left off at Oklahoma State, making big plays all over the field, that simply didn’t happen. Washington enjoyed a rookie year where he got called out by QB Ben Roethlisberger multiple times publicly and hauled in only 16 of his 38 targets. Washington did end up playing a lot of significant snaps down the stretch, but ultimately left a lot to be desired, and was easily the least efficient receiving option on the roster. WR Ryan Switzer and TE Jesse James took turns getting snaps in the slot and on close to the line of scrimmage routes. Justin Hunter and Darrius Heyward-Bey ran some go-routes, but as you can see, weren’t targeted very often. At the end of the day, the passing game ran through Smith-Schuster and Brown and it wasn’t a secret. Both Brown and Smith-Schuster accumulated more than 160 targets (166 for Smith-Schuster and 168 for Brown), which is only the fifth time that’s happened since targets have been recorded (1992). The initiative to get those two the ball was rare. Despite the dysfunction, this team was highly potent from a fantasy perspective.
2019 PITTSBURGH STEELERS
Photo courtesy of rotoworld.com
Things have changed! A lot! At first glance, this team looks nothing like the Steelers teams of the last decade. No Brown, no Bell, and a large cast of characters that weren’t even on the team a year ago. Between WR Diontae Johnson, WR Donte Moncrief, RB Benny Snell and TE Zach Gentry, the Steelers are going to be acclimating a lot of new players to their system. Add in that this is only the second year on the team for players like Washington, RB Jaylen Samuels and WR Ryan Switzer, and it’s easy to recognize how much turnovers there’s been. With that said, even with all the talent they’ve lost, this offense had the potential to rebound, and should be able to find a way to be productive from a fantasy football perspective again in 2019. With Brown and James being gone, that’s 208 targets gone. So, who will soak those up? Realistically, it could mean the Steelers don’t pass as much, but It seems reasonable to expect Washington to take a big step forward from a target-share perspective. Along with him, TE Vance McDonald and Switzer can’t be ignored either, as players who will demand targets close to the line of scrimmage. The receiving ability of Samuels out of the backfield can’t be understated either. While Samuels has a RB designation, he was a TE in college, and there’s no doubt that the Steelers had that versatility in mind when they selected him in 2018. Rumors out of camp are that Moncrief has impressed, and if that’s the case there’s certainly a role for him. If he continues to earn praise, Moncrief has the athleticism to win deep, and would likely be used in an extended version of how they used Hunter and Hayward-Bey in 2018. Roethlisberger has averaged above 300 passing yards per game in three of the last five seasons (320.6 in 2018), and in the two that he wasn’t (2016 and 2017), he still averaged above 270 (272.8 in 2016, 283.4 in 2017). Also, Roethlisberger has thrown 28 or more TDs in four of the last five seasons. This offense Is built to pass, and while they lost their lead WR, they’re not going to change their identity. Smith-Schuster is going to see another incredibly target-heavy 2019 season and should be setup to be a prominent fantasy weapon.
