WR Diontae Johnson is no stranger to accolades. The fifth-year veteran made the All-Pro team as a return man during his rookie season for the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2019. Two years later, he was named to the Pro Bowl as a wide receiver—but as an alternate, rather than outright.
“I ain’t gonna lie, I was pissed that I didn’t get picked first”, he told Arthur Moats in a recent interview. The wide receivers who did make it for the AFC were the Cincinnati Bengals’ Ja’Marr Chase, the Kansas City Chiefs’ Tyreek Hill, the Buffalo Bills’ Stefon Diggs, and the Los Angeles Chargers’ Keenan Allen. Neither Chase nor Allen played, resulting in Johnson and the Las Vegas Raiders’ Hunter Renfrow replacing them.
“I can’t knock them”, Johnson said in praising the wide receivers who made it ahead of him. But he had a reasonable argument. Allen, for example, caught 106 passes for 1,138 yards and six touchdowns. Johnson caught 107 passes for 1,161 yards and eight touchdowns. He also had a higher success rate on his receptions.
Regardless of how he got there, however, he got there, joined by RB Najee Harris, a rookie at the time. He, too, was selected as an alternate, taking the spot of Bengals RB Joe Mixon, whose team advanced to the Super Bowl. And while any player would choose the Super Bowl over the Pro Bowl, it’s an experience Johnson appreciates.
“I’m not gonna lie, I was happy because I was like, ‘I’m not going’. And then they called and said, ‘You made the Pro Bowl’, and I’m like, ‘What?’”, he said, shifting from resignation to jubilation. “That had always been one of my goals, to go to the Pro Bowl. I didn’t care how I got there, I just wanted to go”.
And he’s not stopping there. “That was a different experience, but I loved it. I want to go back, so I’ve just got to keep working”, he added. “My next goal, I want to be All-Pro. I got to get that All-Pro”.
All-Pro, of course, he means as a wide receiver, since he already has an All-Pro on his resume as a return man. Speaking of which, he only returned 20 punts as a rookie, but he did so for 248 yards and one touchdown, producing a league-leading return average of 12.4 yards per attempt. He was taken off punt returns early the following season after he was injured doing so.
The 2021 season was the highlight of Johnson’s career as a wide receiver in the NFL, but things haven’t gone so well since then. It’s no coincidence that QB Ben Roethlisberger’s retirement corresponds with that. The Steelers juggled quarterbacks last year, and he ended up with just 86 catches for 882 yards and zero touchdowns.
On top of that, he has missed most of the 2023 season due to a hamstring injury that he suffered halfway through the season opener. In the six-plus quarters that he has played over the Steelers’ first six games, he has eight receptions for 127 yards. But he’s confident he can get those numbers way up with 11 games to go and his rapport with QB Kenny Pickett the strongest it’s ever been.
