Steeler Showdown: Diontae Johnson vs George Pickens

This is my second installment featuring an ADP battle between two teammates. In my last edition, I focused on the Chargers’ receivers, Mike Williams and Keenan Allen which you can find here. Both, like George Pickens Diontae Johnson for the Steelers who we’ll be discussing today, have very similar ADPs. Johnson and Pickens are separated by just 6.7 spots on Underdog’s more recent ADP for best ball tournaments in the very early portion of the drafting season.

The return of offensive coordinator, Matt Canada for the Steelers certainly disappointed Pittsburgh fans and if we’re being honest, even non-Pittsburgh fans, assuming you didn’t root for a team in the AFC North like Pittsburgh. In two years as the team’s offensive coordinator, they’ve ranked 23rd in yards both years and 21st in scoring in 2021, and 26th in 2022. Not good Bob!

His return and the anemic rookie season from Kenny Pickett understandably have fantasy managers wondering what’s the upside to the skilled players in this offense. Can Pickett really support Johnson, Pickens, and tight end, Pat Freiermuth? Those are very valid questions and I’m going to do my best to help decipher which receiver we should be targeting this year.

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Just Who Is George Pickens and Diontae Johnson?

Let’s start with George Pickens because unfortunately, due to him entering just his second season we don’t have nearly as much information on him. In his first season at Georgia, Pickens finished with 62 targets, 49 receptions, 727 yards, and 8 touchdowns. He finished with a 14.9% target share and a 23.2% market share of the team’s passing yards. He was the team’s leading receiver. For a 19-year-old, this was an incredibly great start to his college career.

In his sophomore season, Pickens struggled to improve upon such a stellar freshman campaign. However, this wasn’t all his fault. He would miss two games due to injury and the graduation of Jake Fromm left Georgia starting two different quarterbacks: Stetson Bennett and JT Daniels. They both significantly struggled throughout the year and the team averaged just finished 30 attempts and 249 passing yards per game. Pickens finished with 55 targets, 36 receptions, 513 yards, and 6 touchdowns. His target share increased to 20.9% and his market share of the team’s yards rose to 22.7%.

Prior to his junior year, Pickens tore his ACL in practice and missed the majority of the season. He returned late in the year and appeared in four games. He finished with 9 targets, 5 receptions, 107 yards, and 0 touchdowns.

He finished with an 18.9% college dominator ranking, which ranked in the 22nd percentile among receivers. He also finished with a 15.4% collegiate career target share, which was in the 30th percentile, but he did have an excellent breakout age of 18.5, which was all the way in the 96th percentile. He ended up being drafted by the Steelers in the second round.

We’ll get to Pickens’ rookie season in the bit once we break down the comparisons between Johnson and him, but let’s talk about Diontae for a second. He’s been in the league for four years and below is a breakdown of how his stats stack up between 2019, his rookie season to 2021.

As you can see from the table above, Diontae Johnson has been an incredibly efficient and very valuable receiver the past two seasons, ever since his rookie year. Even his rookie season, looking at his target share, yards per route run, and targets per route run created a lot of optimism moving forward.

It was just in 2021, not that long ago, when Johnson finished as a top-10 receiver. Actually, when you look at these stats, you’ll notice that Johnson got better in every single statistic except yards per route run every single season from 2019-2021. Prior to last year, if you wanted to make the argument that he was a top-20 receiver, maybe even a top-15 receiver even in the league, you had the numbers to back up your claim. There’s no denying just how good Johnson was in 2020 and 2021.

Which Brings Us to 2022…

With Ben Roethlisberger’s retirement, the Steelers offense was understandably going to go through some growing pains. They brought Mitchell Trubisky as a bridge quarterback and drafted Kenny Pickett in the first round. It didn’t take long for the coaching staff to turn over the keys to the rookie signal caller.

The Steelers’ finished just 26th in points scored and 23rd in total yards. Their passing offense really was actually worse than that. They finished 17th in pass attempts, 24th in passing yards, and dead last in passing touchdowns. Below is a table of where Pickett ranked in several passing statistics last year among all quarterbacks who started at least six games.

On a positive note, there’s really only one way to go, am I right? Those numbers are bad. Really, really bad. Conventional wisdom says Pickett should be better in 2023, but it’s at least somewhat of a question mark because of just how bad some of these numbers are. So, what does this all mean for Pickens and Johnson?

The Final Showdown – George Pickens vs Diontae Johnson

Let’s look at their 2022 stats and see how they stack up.

It should be noted, in an attempt to make it more even for Pickens, his stats are based on Weeks 9-18, post-Chase Claypool trade. Diontae Johnson’s stats are from the whole season. So technically, this gives an edge to Pickett. He got to get his feet wet for eight games and in his sample worked with fewer target competition. Johnson had to compete for targets with Claypool, Pickens, and Freiermuth for eight games.

Still, when we look at the stats it’s crazy that fantasy managers are actually drafting George Pickens ahead of Diontae Johnson. That’s exactly what is happening on Underdog right now. Pickens has an ADP of 67.0 and is coming off the board as the WR36, while Johnson is being selected with an ADP of 73.7 and is WR38. People, people, people… what are we doing here?

Their full-PPR PPG average last year was incredibly close with Pickett holding the slight edge at 11.0 vs 10.2, but that was with Johnson scoring zero touchdowns despite being tied for 10th among receivers with 18 red zone targets. Pickens finished with seven red zone targets, tied for 67th among receivers.

Johnson scoring zero touchdowns on 147 targets and 18 red zone targets is quite possibly the biggest anomaly of all time as it pertains to receiver statistics. It’s absurd, but it’s great for us because it’s significantly lowering his cost of admission. Don’t forget, Miles Sanders scored zero touchdowns in 2021 and then scored 11 this past season.

Johnson almost has Pickens doubled up in targets per game and that’s despite the more favorable sample size for Pickens when he was working as the clear No. 2 receiver with no more Claypool. Expecting the quarterback play to be suspect again in 2023, fantasy managers should not want anything to do with the receiver with a low target share and targets with a higher degree of difficulty.

Pickens had an average depth of target of 15.6 yards. These kinds of targets are extremely volatile and with poor quarterback play, they are very risky. Johnson, on the other hand, had an average depth of target of just 10.6 yards. Those are much easier throws for a quarterback.

While Underdog is a best-ball tournament which is why fantasy managers are currently favoring Pickens because of his downfield role and the touchdowns from last year, Johnson is still the better bet to be the more valuable asset even in this type of format.

On FantasyPros, Johnson is currently ranked as the WR29 and Pickens is at WR36. Johnson, even at this price represents an excellent value. In 2021, he was the WR9 and in 2020, he was WR22. Johnson is currently one of the better values in fantasy drafts right now and is situated very nicely for a big bounce-back season.

Pickens, even at WR36, doesn’t present much value. He’s going to be competing with Freiermuth all year for the right to be Pickett’s No. 2 target. It should be noted that Freiermuth too, largely out-targeted Pickens last year, which leaves Pickens possibly as Pickett’s No. 3 target in 2023. With the poor offensive output expected in Pittsburgh and the disappointing quarterback play, that’s not a player fantasy managers should be betting on.

Right now, fantasy managers should be thankful for Johnson’s zero-touchdown season last year because it creates an amazing buying opportunity. Try to ignore the shiny new toy in Pickens and just draft one of the better receivers in the NFL, Diontae Johnson, at a significantly discounted rate instead.

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