No Steelers taken high in recent fantasy football mock draft

Bleacher Report recently conducted a fantasy football mock draft, but here’s why no Steelers were taken until the middle of the third round.

NFL training camp also means that it’s fantasy mock draft season for many fantasy football players out there. Without preseason games to focus on this August, there’s all the more reason to dive deeper into fantasy football. Unfortunately, you may want to hold off on drafting any of your favorite Steelers players early.

Recently, Gary Davenport of Bleacher Report put together a team of fantasy drafters to complete a 16-round fantasy mock draft. For this simulation, he used PPR scoring and had a lineup that consisted of starting two running backs, three wide receivers, and one “flex” player.

In this fantasy mock draft, it wasn’t a surprise to see players like Christian McCaffrey, Saquan Barkley, and Ezekiel Elliot be the first three off the board. However, it was interesting to see where the first Steelers were going.

31 picks into the fantasy draft, the first Pittsburgh player was finally selected: Wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster. Though JuJu had 1,426 receiving yards and 7 touchdowns in his last full sesaon with Ben Roethlisberger in 2018, the former Pro Bowl receiver fell all the way to the middle of the third round.

There are several reasons fantasy players may need to be leary of taking JuJu high this year. Though he was extremely productive with Antonio Brown working opposite of him, we have yet to truly see what Smith-Schuster can do when consistently drawing the most coverage from the opposing defense.

Apparently, fantasy experts have him in the same range as skill players like Allen Robinson, Leonard Fournette, and D.J. Moore. This is a bit concerning when it comes to his fantasy outlook for the 2020 season.

After JuJu, fantasy drafters waited all the way to the final pick of the fourth round to take the next Steelers players. James Conner was the second Pittsburgh player to come off the board at pick 4:12, which also comes as a bit of a surprise. Despite being one of the league’s top fantasy backs for a majority of the sesaon in 2018, Conner fell out of favor with fantasy owners last season. But even with the return of Ben Roethlisberger, he has yet to elevate his draft status. It doesn’t help that there are rumors the Steelers could go with more of a committee approach in the backfield this year.

There was a huge gap between Conner and the next drafted Steelers player. Eventually, Diontae Johnson would come off the board at pick 9:04, while Eric Ebron was drafted with the last pick in the 11th round.

The only other Steelers to be selected in the 16-round mock draft were Anthony McFarland at 12:09, Pittsburgh’s defense/special teams at pick 13:09, and Ben Roethlisberger at pick 14:07. Remarkably, wide receiver James Washington did not get drafted.

While we should take a simulated fantasy draft with a grain of salt, it’s important not to pounce too soon on Steelers players in your own fantasy leagues. Without Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell and with an aging Ben Roethlisberger, Pittsburgh may be without any elite fantasy players this year.