XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT
One of the most fun weeks of the season so far is coming to an end with the Giants visiting the Steelers. Oh boy. This game has a whopping 36.5 total with Pittsburgh favored by 6. The Steelers, as is the case most years, boast an elite defense (allowing just 14.4 points per game so far, and though they’ve mostly faced below-average offenses, the Giants are, well, a below-average offense). Pittsburgh’s struggle has been on offense, at least until last week when Russell Wilson found the fountain of youth and absolutely eviscerated the New York Jets. The Giants have had a surprisingly capable defense which has kept them in a lot of games (and in particular has been elite at getting to opposing QBs, leading the league with 4.4 sacks per game) but also a subpar offense. Both teams boast good defenses but Pittsburgh’s is better. Both teams have subpar offenses but Pittsburgh’s . . . might be better? We’ll see if Russ was actually good or just a one-trick pony last week.
Pittsburgh
The Steelers backfield is split between Najee Harris and Jaylen Warren, with Harris looking like the old version of the Cowboys Ezekiel Elliott a couple of years ago and Warren trying to fill the Tony Pollard role as the change of pace back with explosive per touch upside. Najee is doing a great job of looking like Zeke, running for a below-average 4.1 yards per carry (though frankly not as bad as I thought he would be, and he ran extremely well last week), while Warren is not doing a great job in the “explosive per-touch upside” category with 3.3 yards per carry and only 11 targets in five games. Yikes. Najee is the solid floor, questionable ceiling back – he’s a big home favorite, his workload should be solid, and his goal-line equity is great (23 red zone carries against just 5 for all other RBs combined), but his passing game role is minimal and his odds of hitting 100+ rushing yards are not great. There’s nothing exciting here, but if the game ends up being a low-scoring slog, he could do enough to get there. Warren at $7,200 is a really tough sell for me. He got 15 opportunities last week in a blowout, but generally, he’s been in the 5-9 opportunity range. With no real red zone work and minimal passing game involvement, it’s tough for him to pay off this kind of salary. I’m mostly a pass here at this price.
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The Pittsburgh passing game is where things are interesting. Justin Fields didn’t do an awful job during his weeks as the Steelers quarterback but he wasn’t exactly awesome through the air. Russ looked awful last year in Denver, and he only completed 55% of his passes last week, but he threw for 2 touchdowns and 264 yards on just 29 dropbacks. I think it’s fair to say that Russ is an upgrade over Fields, which makes the Pittsburgh pass game more interesting than it used to be but I also think it’s fair to say we shouldn’t expect elite performances each week from Russ as that time of his career has passed. The Steelers will run out George Pickens, Van Jefferson, and Calvin Austin as their primary wide receivers with Pat Freiermuth at tight end, and then Scotty Miller, Brandon Johnson, Darnell Washington, and MyCole Pruitt will play more rotational roles. Targets from Russ’s first 29 pass attempts went Pickens 9, Jefferson 3, Austin 4, Freiermuth 3, Washington 4, Warren 3, Harris 1, and I’m missing 1 so some rando guy got one I guess. Whee. Anyhow, that’s an awesome target share for Pickens and a crummy target share for everyone else. Pickens is the clear alpha here and he’d already shown some upside with Fields. I think he’s likely to have a strong second half of the season with Russ in at QB. The matchup isn’t great, but after a 5/111/1 performance against the Jets, it’s hard to be scared off of this spot. He’s the clear top option. Freiermuth is likeliest to be the best second option over time. $6,200 is a little spendy for a guy coming off of three consecutive 3-target games, though. There’s hope for more with the QB change but man, this is expensive. I think he’s kind of an interesting pay-up to be contrarian tournament play, as more volume should pop for him at some point, and we could hypothesize that the Steelers may need more short area receiving work to counteract the Giants pass rush. Everyone else here is a punt play with the way volume has been distributed (both pre-and post-Russ). Jefferson and Austin are the guys on the field the most, so they’re the best punts, but all of these guys are pretty ugly/scary options. I’ll give a slight nod to Austin as I think he has more per-target upside, but they’re both thin.
The tight-end situation is worth noting as Pruitt’s return knocked a few snaps off for Washington but he still saw 4 targets. I think this is likely fluky that he out-targeted Freiermuth and wouldn’t read much into it, but Russ does have a long history of throwing touchdowns to tight ends, as anyone who played Seahawks Showdowns a few years ago will remember. He’s a punt but closer to Jefferson and Austin than to the Miller // Johnson // Pruitt trio. Those three are all extremely thin “hope for 1 catch and a touchdown” plays.
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