The Pittsburgh Steelers may not have the strongest wide receiver room, but one skill they are not lacking is speed. Between Scotty Miller, Quez Watkins, Calvin Austin III, and Roman Wilson, they have the makings of a 4×100 relay team that could give anyone a run for their money.
Deep passing should be making a comeback in Pittsburgh. With a strong running game, the Steelers should be able to work in play-action passing to help take deep shots. Along with the stable of speedy receivers, they also have two quarterbacks who are more than capable of pushing the ball down the field.
Justin Fields was asked about the competition at wide receiver and offered his opinion on a few of the players.
“I feel bad when guys are one-on-one with Scotty,” Fields said after today’s practice in a transcript provided by the team. “He makes a lot of guys look foolish out there on the field. Calvin – he’s a guy that can take the top off the defense and get open in small spaces, so it’s good having those guys. And then Quez, we’ve seen in training camp, he can take the top off the defense and he’s great at tracking deep balls.
“So all those guys have their relative skills, and I’m excited to see what they do this last preseason game.”
His words on Miller were particularly strong. If you go just off of usage and production in training camp practices, Miller was the third-best receiver after George Pickens and Van Jefferson. He caught 20 of his 29 targets in Latrobe for 189 yards and three touchdowns, per Alex Kozora’s training camp stats.
In two preseason games, Miller was targeted seven times and caught six of them for 65 yards, including one for a long of 38 yards against the Houston Texans. I included a clip of that long reception below.
This will be Miller’s sixth NFL season. He spent the first four with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and last season with Arthur Smith and the Atlanta Falcons. His best season came all the way back in 2020 while working with Tom Brady. He had 33 receptions on 53 targets for 501 yards and three touchdowns in the regular season.
It is going to be very interesting to see who makes the cut when the 53-man roster is unveiled next Tuesday. In 2022 the Steelers kept seven receivers on their initial 53-man roster and six in 2023. Pickens, Jefferson, and Wilson are roster locks at this point. That should leave about three open spots. I suppose that could just be Austin, Miller, and Watkins, but do they really need that many speedsters that fill a similar role?
Judging by the training camp stats alone, Austin would be the odd man out as he had the fewest targets. But he is the incumbent punt returner, a role that Quez Watkins likely won’t get another shot at after an ugly preseason opener.
Scotty Miller seems like a safe bet right now with his preseason and training camp production. It doesn’t hurt that people have noted his chemistry with QB Russell Wilson, and obviously Justin Fields thinks highly of him as well.
