Where does Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster rank positional in most 2019 fantasy football scoring systems and should he finally be ranked higher than his former teammate, Oakland Raiders wide receiver Antonio Brown?
Matthew Berry, ESPN’s top fantasy football expert, along with several other gurus on a panel, recently ranked wide receivers during a fantasy football summit and the results show that Smith-Schuster is 6th overall in their top ten wide receivers with Brown ranked one spot behind him at No. 7 overall.
“I think it’s close, Smith Schuster, believe it or not, was actually number one in pass routes in the entire NFL last season, stated one fantasy summit panel member. “So he was busy the way it is even while Antonio Brown was there. Seventh or better in targets, receptions, receiving yards.”
Some of Smith-Schuster’s receiving stats without Brown even on the field were also passed along in the segment.
“Over his career with Brown on the field, Smith-Schuster is catching a pass on 15 percent of his routes, targets on 22 [percent],” another fantasy summit analysts said. “With him not on the field, catching a pass on 20 percent of his routes, targeted on 26 [percent of his routes]. So, he was looked for more and he actually had a catch on a higher percentage of his routes run without Brown on the field, than with Brown.”
Berry then passed along this statistical nugget.
“Three career games without Antonio Brown, JuJu Smith-Schuster, 20 receptions, 255 [yards], 3 touchdowns, 27 targets over those three games,” Berry stated. “He scored in all three games. He averaged 23.1 fantasy points per game in those three games. Last year that would have been number one on a points per game basis.”
In this particular segment shown below, the fact that Smith-Schuster plays with a better quarterback than Brown wasn’t even brought up and that’s something else that probably needs to be taken into account, in my opinion.
Thanks to a few of these stats rattled off by these fantasy gurus, I intend on going back and looking at Smith-Schuster’s usage and targets in plays that Brown wasn’t on the field for and I will pass those findings along to everyone in a later summer post.
