Each week, all of Steelers’ Nation will be rooting for Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell. So will their fantasy owners.
The NFL Network ranked the Top 50 fantasy football players last night and those two Steelers were given the gold and silver. Bell was ranked second by the panel, Brown first.
Michael Fabiano had Bell as his #1 overall player on his personal list.
“When Bell is on the field, he is phenomenal. This is a guy who is going to average 14 to 15 fantasy points per game. He’s going to be targeted in the passing game, he caught 80+ balls a couple years ago. He’s young, he’s motivated, he’s as close to LaDainian Tomlinson as we have in the National Football League.”
Analyst Marcus Grant did caution, correctly, about the role DeAngelo Williams will have, siphoning away some work from Bell. That could be seen at its peak early in the season, Bell’s first few games back from his torn MCL and PCL suffered last season. Still, most fantasy backs have a looming committee threat so even if Williams sees the field for 10-12 snaps a game, it’s going to have a minimal impact on Bell’s fantasy status.
Brown, the #1 fantasy receiver the last two years, was voted the top fantasy player in the land. Adam Rank made the bold prediction that Brown will find the end zone 20 times.
Brown’s career high is 14 total touchdowns (13 receiving, 1 returning) set back in 2014. 20 seems awfully high though as I said on Friday’s podcast, I believe Brown can reach a career high in touchdowns this season. No Martavis Bryant, and no Heath Miller will make Brown an even bigger target in the red zone.
Brown may not go #1 overall in every league, so many people will still learn towards running back in a toss-up, but you can bet he’ll go in the top three in almost every league.
The Steelers’ Twitter page was pretty happy to see the results.
