May 31, 2019

With the Antonio Brown era in Pittsburgh over, new opportunities exist in the Steelers receiving corps that haven’t been there for awhile. JuJu Smith-Schuster will be the team’s number-one option at the position, but there’s a huge opening for second-year wide receiver James Washington to take over the number-two role on the team. As a rookie, Washington didn’t make a huge impact on the field, finishing with 16 receptions for 217 yards and a touchdown. But signs existed that point to Washington having a significant role moving forward, including a total of seven games over the course of the season where he was on the field for at least 60 percent of the team’s offensive snaps. While the team signed receiver Donte Moncrief and drafted rookie Diontae Johnson, neither of those was a move that necessarily hurts Washington’s outlook for the upcoming season, and most projected depth charts have him starting on the outside. The Steelers and quarterback Ben Roethlisberger have had inconsistent results historically when it comes to getting multiple wide receivers involved on a consistent basis, but over the last couple of years, they had success with the Brown and Smith-Schuster pairing. Washington has the upside of someone who can be a fantasy WR2, but the safer bet is to project him to be somewhere in the WR3/4 tier for this upcoming season. He should possess a fairly solid floor based on how pass-happy the Steelers tend to be.--Justin Carter - RotoBaller