BALLER MOVE: Target Around ~85 Overall
CURRENT ADP:~104
ANALYSIS: Last season, his first as a pro, Diontae Johnson put on a show playing for a virtual quarterback-less Pittsburgh Steelers. That's not a joke. Johnson racked up all of 163.1 PPR points in his freshman year, which ranks 15th-best among rookie-wideouts since 2015 and beat the tallies of past stud-rookies such as Stefon Diggs, D.J. Moore, or Courtland Sutton.
Johnson did all that while being put in one of the worst possible situations in the whole NFL. The Steelers had incumbent WR1 JuJu Smith-Schuster, who wasn’t going anywhere. James Washington had a clear leg up on Johnson and the team signed Donte Moncrief. Johnson was a third-round rookie with very little fanfare that many, including myself, thought was severely overdrafted. He was a long shot to even contribute. Then, as if things couldn’t get worse, Ben Roethlisberger blew out his elbow in the second game of the season. He spent the rest of the season working with Mason Rudolph and Devlin Hodges, who are two of the worst quarterbacks to ever do it.
Johnson saw a catchable target on 72.8% of balls, good for 81st in the league. To put things in perspective, his 59 receptions for 680 yards were mighty impressive. Most impressive, however, was the fact that Johnson led the league in target separation at 2.39 yards. He only dropped just three passes all season. Simply put, Johnson is an elite technician at the wide receiver position.
At the time of this writing, with not much more than a week for the season to kick-off, Johnson is getting off draft boards as the WR40 with an overall ADP of 104. That feels a little too low for what he can offer as Pittsburgh's WR2. PFF projects Johnson to reach 175 PPR points over the year for a WR3 finish, although after what he showed as a rookie he definitely brings enough upside to enter the WR2 tier.
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