Pro Football Focus, the go-to resource for everything NFL, recently published a list of 15 NFL players entering prove-it years in 2020. There had to be one Steeler on it, right?
Here is what PFF had to say about Steelers wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster:
The 2018 season saw JuJu Smith-Schuster rack up 111 receptions, 1,426 yards (both more than Antonio Brown) and seven scores. When Brown’s time in Pittsburgh came to an end, Smith-Schuster was supposed to step up as the team’s top receiver, but 2019 was a disaster. He missed time injured, and with no Ben Roethlisberger throwing the football, he ended the season with barely over 500 receiving yards and an overall PFF grade almost 20 points lower than his 2018 grade. The question marks all remain of whether Smith-Schuster can thrive on the outside as the No. 1 target without Brown taking the focus away from him, and now he has to fight off competition from Diontae Johnson, who impressed despite the awful quarterback situation last season.
Injuries are nearly unavoidable in a game like football. When Roethlisberger went down, the effect was a decline in Smith-Schuster’s productivity. The few times the Steelers had success through the air, Smith-Schuster was seeing the double teams that Brown was getting the season before.
A full season with the offense clicking on all cylinders should do a world of good for the wide receiver corp. While Johnson is no Antonio Brown, he is a dynamic, gifted athlete. Given his fantastic rookie season, there’s no reason Johnson won’t improve even further and, in turn, command more coverage from secondaries. If that proves to be the case, more opportunities should open up for Smith-Schuster to make big plays.
I suppose that Smith-Schuster should be lucky that 2019 wasn’t a contract year because who knows what his market value would be based on a subpar, injury-filled season.
2019 was not the Steelers’ season, nor was it Smith-Schuster’s. I think we’d all like to forget about the Roethlisberger-less season and look, hopefully, to this season.
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