The Steelers are now in their offseason after failing to reach the playoffs in 2022, coming up just a game short of sneaking in as the seventh seed. They needed help in week 18 and only got some of it, so instead they sat home and watched the playoffs with the rest of us.
On tap is figuring out how to be on the field in January and February instead of being a spectator. They started out 2-6, digging a hole that proved too deep to dig out of even if they managed to go 7-2 in the second half of the year.
Starting from the end of the regular season and leading all the way up to the beginning of the 2023 season, there are plenty of questions that need answered, starting with who will be the offensive coordinator. Which free agents will be kept? Who might be let go due to their salary? How might they tackle free agency with this new front office? We’ll try to frame the conversation in relevant ways as long as you stick with us throughout this offseason, as we have for many years.
Question: Who will have more receiving yards, Diontae Johnson or George Pickens?
The Pittsburgh Steelers as a team threw for 3411 yards last year, good for 24th in the league, averaging roughly 215 passing yards per game. 2415 of those yards went to just three players: Diontae Johnson (882), George Pickens (801), and Pat Freiermuth (732).
We should reasonably expect the Steelers’ top two wide receivers to finish one and two on the team’s receiving yardage list once again in 2023. But who will be on top this time? Will Johnson continue to outproduce Pickens in terms of volume in that regard, or will Pickens’ expected improved touches per route run result in his yardage total ballooning enough to surpass his teammate?
It certainly seems as though the majority think (and/or hope) that Pickens will storm past Johnson as the team’s number one receiver this year, becoming the league’s next Justin Jefferson or Ja’Marr Chase. That certainly wouldn’t be a bad thing.
But Johnson isn’t going anywhere, either. He’s going to get his targets, and no matter how much Pickens improves his route-running from last season, he’ll probably still trail in that area, which means Johnson is still going to be valuable.
This question was spurred on by something I heard recently stating that a betting line somewhere—I don’t remember where, exactly, and it doesn’t really matter—had the over/under line for the receiving yardage total for both Johnson and Pickens as the exact same.
In other words, it doesn’t sound as though even the bettors know who is going to be the team’s number one receiver this year. We can only hope that that proves to be a good problem to have, rather than a bad one.
