Tag: Diontae Johnson

Words of Steelers late WRs coach Darryl Drake, ‘shut out the noise’ still resonate

The influence Darryl Drake had on Diontae Johnson was very significant.

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On top of everything else the Pittsburgh Steelers suffered through the loss of former wide receivers coach Darryl Drake last season. Drake died just before the start of the season and the team took it hard. Drake was a powerful positive influence on a young and talented group of pass catchers.

Wide receiver Diontae Johnson spoke to the media on Wednesday via Zoom and reiterated just how powerful Drake’s influence was on this team to this day including his message to “shut out the noise.”

This season the Steelers have former pro Ike Hilliard coaching up the wide receivers. There’s no doubt Hilliard will do a great job. His resume is spotless. But despite only being with the Steelers for two seasons, his lasting impression lives on in the wide receiver room.

It’s a critical role this year, considering the youth and the talent of the Steelers’ receiving corps, not to mention the return from injury of quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.

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A glimpse into what could be Diontae Johnson’s future

Steelers Wire takes a look at the second year of current and past Steelers wide receivers to predict Diontae Johnson’s future.

As a rookie, Steelers wide receiver Diontae Johnson had a great season, especially considering the offense fell apart after its leader was placed on injured reserve. Johnson logged a rookie-high 59 receptions for 680 yards and five touchdowns — all but three of those receptions came from Mason Rudolph and Duck Hodges. Just imagine what Johnson will do with Ben Roethlisberger at the helm.

In terms of production, players typically make the most significant leap from their first to second seasons.

Where do you think that will put Johnson? An excellent indicator of the future is the past.

Here is how other receivers in their second-year have performed:

James Washington

(Photo by Justin Berl/Getty Images)

44 rec., 735 yards, three touchdowns

JuJu Smith-Schuster

(Photo by Joe Sargent/Getty Images)

111 rec., 1,426 yards, seven touchdowns

Antonio Brown

(Photo by Joe Sargent/Getty Images)

69 rec., 1,108 yards, two touchdowns

 

Martavis Bryant

Mandatory Credit: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports

50 rec., 765 yards, six touchdowns

 

Markus Wheaton

(Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images)

53 rec., 644 yards, two touchdowns

 

Emmanuel Sanders

Mandatory Credit: Brad Mills-USA TODAY Sports

22 rec., 288 yards, two touchdowns

 

Mike Wallace

(Photo by Jared Wickerham/Getty Images)

60 rec., 1,257 yards, 10 touchdowns

 

Santonio Holmes

Mandatory Credit: Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports

52 rec., 942 yards, eight touchdowns

 

Plaxico Burress

(Photo by: DAVID MAXWELL/AFP via Getty Images)

66 rec., 1,008 yards, six touchdowns

 

Hines Ward

(Photo by Rick Stewart/Getty Images)

61 rec., 638 yards, seven touchdowns

 

I estimate that Johnson will put up 60 receptions, 881 yards, and nine touchdowns based on his eight predecessors and two current teammates’ past production. The potential is there for Johnson’s numbers to be even higher, but there are a lot of cooks in the Steelers kitchen — more than Roethlisberger has ever had it his disposal.

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How Steelers WR JuJu Smith-Schuster can solve his fumbling issues

Steelers wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster doesn’t fumble often, but when he does, it’s the absolute worst timing ever.

Steelers Wire has published dozens of posts about wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster during the span of his three-year career. Many comments are positive — it’s clear most Steelers fans love JuJu and would like him to remain with the Steelers beyond 2020.

However, there are plenty of comments criticizing the receiver for his fumbling issues. “He needs to fumble less,” wrote one fan. “You’ll get paid when you show you can hold onto the ball,” asserted another.

The overwhelming response prompted us to consult the best football minds and WR gurus to craft the best plan to help JuJu, and here’s what we came up with…

Wait.

He doesn’t actually have a fumbling problem.

In three seasons or 48 games, JuJu has had two fumbles — twice in 1,588 times has he made an error. Fumbles will happen. Just ask Antonio Brown. As a level comparison, in Brown’s first three seasons, he fumbled three times — eight total so far in 8.1-year career. Brown was lucky, though, as all were recovered by the Steelers. In 2019, rookie Diontae Johnson surrendered five fumbles and lost two. Veteran center Maurkice Pouncey had four fumbles and lost one.

The difference? JuJu’s cringe-worthy fumbles came at critical moments in both matchups and, ultimately, cost the Steelers a pair of games.

Smith-Schuster’s first fumble occurred in his second year. It was New Orleans, Week 16, and the Steelers were in the thick of the playoff hunt at 9-6-1. They needed a field goal to tie and a touchdown to win. With 42 seconds left, the Steelers were 12 yards from field goal range. JuJu caught the ball and ran seven yards before he was taken down by tackle Sheldon Rankins. He rolled over on Rankins, and the ball came flying out. The Saints recovered, and Drew Brees took a knee to end the game.

Not that you need reminding, but his second untimely mishandle was versus the Baltimore Ravens last year in overtime — punched out by cornerback Marlon Humphrey. You may have heard of him. He has three forced fumbles since his rookie season in 2017. Of the three Humphrey forced, he recovered two and returned them for touchdowns. Thankfully, none were JuJu’s — however, since the fumble occurred in Steelers territory, it didn’t take long for the Ravens to get into field goal range and win the game.

Fumbles are an inevitable part of players’ careers, and JuJu is probably going to have more in a career that could continue for 10+ seasons. If the flubs hadn’t happened in the scenarios they did, I doubt we’d even remember them.

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2020 is a prove-it or move-it season for Steelers WR JuJu Smith-Schuster

Pro Football Focus released its NFL players entering prove-it years in 2020 and Steelers’ wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster is one of them.

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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Steelers OC Randy Fichtner ranks 2nd in pass-heavy play-calling

Under offensive coordinator Randy Fichtner, the Pittsburgh Steelers love to air it out.

ESPN writer, Mike Clay, performed an extensive analysis of NFL playcaller tendencies for every team and found that the Steelers have a penchant for airing it out — so much so that offensive coordinator Randy Fichtner is ranked as the second pass-heaviest playcaller in the NFL.

Here is what Clay wrote about Fichtner:

Fichtner took over for Todd Haley as the Steelers’ playcaller in 2018. There’s not much to take away here, as the offense was heavy on volume, passing and production with Ben Roethlisberger healthy in 2018, but quite the opposite without him in 2019. Both offenses were below average in aDOT (especially to the tight end) and both were above average in RB targets.

In Fichtner’s first outing as OC (he was promoted from quarterbacks coach) in 2018, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger led the league with an astounding 675 attempts. In doing so, Roethlisberger broke his previous career-high of 608 set in 2014, the only other time he threw 600+ passes.

2018 wasn’t that long ago, but the Steelers are now without a significant part of that offense — wide receiver Antonio Brown. However, thanks to the double-teaming of Brown, JuJu Smith-Schuster led the team in receiving yards with 1,426 (to Browns’ 1,297).

There is no better word to use to describe the 2019 offense other than disastrous. Due to injuries and the loss of Roethlisberger for the season, Smith-Schuster wasn’t able to live up to “wide receiver No. 1” billing. The QB carousel of Mason Rudolph and Duck Hodges resulted in a paltry 2,981 yards passing on 510 completions.

To say the least, 2020 will be an interesting season for the Steelers offense. There are three new faces — rookie WR Chase Claypool and free agents Derek Watt (fullback) and Eric Ebron (tight end). Add to that Smith-Schuster (in a contract year), Diontae Johnson, James Washington, Vance McDonald, and the receiving talents of running backs James Conner and Jaylen Samuels, and the Steelers should pose a nightmare for defenses. With a plethora of weapons available at Fichtner’s disposal and the return of Roethlisberger, the sky is the limit.

Only time will tell if Roethlisberger can return to form and be able to air it out to Fichtner’s standards. Either way, the NFL is a passing league, and the Steelers seem up for the challenge.

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Which 2nd-year Steeler will have the best season on offense?

Cast your vote to tell us who you think will have the best season of the sophomore players on offense.

The Pittsburgh Steelers have two offensive players heading into their sophomore seasons who can potentially have a big impact in 2020: Wide receiver Diontae Johnson and running back Benny Snell, Jr.

In his rookie season, Johnson contributed 680 yards and five touchdowns. Despite James Conner missing six games in 2019 and getting his chance to shine, Snell and the run game never took off. Snell finished the season with 426 rushing yards and two TDs.

Both positions are loaded and it’s unknown how the depth chart will play out, but who do you think will have the best season when it’s all said and done?

Even though quarterback Ben Roethlisberger will have a plethora of receiving options this season, I still think Johnson will have the most productive season of the two sophomores. Snell might see the field to spell Conner, but unless head coach Mike Tomlin goes back on his decision to stick with one RB, I don’t think Snell will be putting up anything special.

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Cast your vote and tell us!

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Steelers WR Diontae Johnson played much of 2019 with groin injury

A healthy Diontae Johnson is a scary thought for the rest of the NFL.

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Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Diontae Johnson was one of the best rookie wideouts in 2019. He finished the season with 59 receptions for 680 yards and five touchdowns. Johnson was also named to the Pro Bowl as a punt returner despite only 20 returns on the season.

This is all made more remarkable when Johnson told the media on Wednesday he suffered a groin injury in the second week of the season and played with it for the rest of the year.  Johnson proved to be explosive and dynamic as the team’s third-round pick in 2019. He came in on the heels of the Steelers trading away Antonio Brown and certainly gave some flashes of the same types of skills.

Johnson told the press he had surgery on the injury back in February but plans to be back to 100 percent for training camp and the start of the season. Johnson, along with JuJu Smith-Schuster, James Washington and Chase Claypool should form a rather formidable unit with the healthy return of quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.

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Steelers WR Diontae Johnson offers hard truth of games without fans

There will definitely be a different dynamic to an NFL game played in an empty stadium.

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Despite the fact the NFL seems to be making progress in moving forward with offseason workouts and training camps, there is still a real possibility when teams start playing games, packing stadiums with screaming fans won’t be allowed.

We have already seen some professional sports do this and although I am not a fan of many other sports I did watch some and the impact of it on television value is obvious.

Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Diontae Johnson spoke to the media on Wednesday via video conferencing and he said what we all have been thinking in regards to playing in empty stadiums.

“The game just wouldn’t feel right,” Johnson said. “It would feel like another practice,” Johnson said in the call it would feel more like a scrimmage and it isn’t hard to imagine the same level of intensity would be there is the crowd isn’t there hyping the players up and vice versa.

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Steelers land 2 on PFF 2nd-year breakout list

Pro Football Focus targets two Steelers who are potential breakout candidates for 2020.

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For many NFL players, the jump from year one to year two can be astronomical. This is especially true for guys who are drafted high and flash potential in their rookie season. The smart folks at Pro Football Focus looked over the best of the 2019 NFL draft class and put together their list of second-year breakout candidates.

The Pittsburgh Steelers landed two guys on the list, linebacker Devin Bush and wide receiver Diontae Johnson.

Here’s a bit of what they had to say about Bush.

 Bush acclimated well in his first year, and so well, in fact, that with a full year in the system, he could kick on and look like one of the best in the league in 2020. Bush surrendered five touchdowns in coverage, two more than any other rookie linebacker, and was also penalized twice as much as any other first-year linebacker. But the plays he did make suggest he could develop into something special, maybe as soon as Year 2.

And Johnson:

Diontae Johnson had 680 receiving yards and five touchdowns as a third-round rookie last year, so you could make the case that he’s already broken out. But when you consider what the quarterback situation was like in Pittsburgh with no Ben Roethlisberger, you will soon appreciate how much more there is to come.

Both players stood out at times in 2019 but I agree they have so much more to give. Bush saw a big dip in his reps mid-season for what the coaches said was a conditioning decision but you could see him struggle to deal with some of the complexity of NFL defenses.

And for Johnson, it’s easy to dismiss his struggles on quarterback play but I’m not sold on him to make a big jump in 2020. There are only going to be so many targets to go around and even with Ben Roethlisberger back, Johnson might not have the chance for a huge statistical jump.

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Big Ben Roethlisberger loves big targets

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger’s completion percentage increases when throwing to big wide receivers.

When Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger takes the field this regular season, he’ll have a luxury he hasn’t had in quite some time — a big target in rookie wide receiver Chase Claypool.

Roethlisberger will be three seasons removed from the last towering receiver he had in Martavis Bryant. And we all know how that worked out. Just as the 6-4 receiver was coming into his own, he was suspended for violating the league’s substance-abuse policy in the 2016 offseason.

When Bryant returned in 2017, he put up a decent amount of yards in 15 games (603), but his touchdowns decreased by half (3) from the 2015 season (6). For his career in Pittsburgh, he logged 126 receptions on 224 targets.

Years prior to Bryant, WR Plaxico Burress was briefly on the receiving end of Roethlisberger’s passes. The 6-5 receiver recorded 38 receptions on 66 targets over a 15-game span.

Although Big Ben’s completion percentage average (64.3) ranks up there with some of the best QBs in the league, he has not always been pin-point accurate.

When Burress and Bryant were on the scene, however, Roethlisberger enjoyed completion percentages of 66 percent (2004), 67 percent (2014), and a career-high completion percentage of 68 percent in 2015.

Enter Chase “Mapletron” Claypool. His tight end-like measurables are impressive — 6-4, 238 lbs., 32-inch arms, just shy of 10-inch hands, and his NFL Combine vertical jump was 40.5. Arms and hands are comparable to Bryant (32-inch, 9.5-inch) and Burress (34-inch, 9.5-inch), but he’s the winner in the weight and vertical categories.

What could delay his impact is the talent ahead of him — Claypool will be battling JuJu Smith-Schuster, Diontae Johnson, and James Washington for offensive snaps. His biggest competition could be Washington, who will likely be playing in the same position (outside X receiver).

What will help Claypool make his mark is his overwhelming size and speed, which is unlike any receiver the Steelers have had since Bryant. His expansive catch radius and ability to win contested catches will be a QB’s dream come true.

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