3 reasons Steelers Chase Claypool will have a better season than Johnson

Chase Claypool was a significant weapon for the Steelers in 2020. Here’s why the Steelers receiver could be even better than than Dionteae Johnson. 

The Steelers offense declined in the latter part of the 2020 season and that may have had something to do with Claypool hitting his rookie wall. We saw much less usage out of Mapletron in weeks 13-17 than we did in weeks 1-6. The lack of running game didn’t help either. Yet, I find myself wondering if he had continued being such a strong deep threat towards the end of the year would things would have turned out better than they did?

For now, we turn to the future and Claypool is a prime candidate for a breakout season in 2021. There were similar expectations for Diontae Johnson heading into last season and while I was saddened to be correct in worrying about #18’s ability to catch the ball I am confident that Claypool will have a stronger sophomore campaign than Johnson did.

Claypool is a deep threat and that is what was missing in Canada’s offenses in college.

For as much as fans are excited about Canada bringing motion and play-action back to the Steelers’ playbook in 2021 Claypool must be salivating. The use of play-action should help delay the safety help that kept Claypool from dominating all season in 2020 and I am very excited to see the results in 2021.

More importantly, with Claypool’s size, he is a great threat in the Redzone and Canada must be recognizing this. Canada will have plenty of ways to utilize him as they did on Claypool’s touchdown run against Philadelphia. I expect #11 to be moved around a bit this year and if his route tree has gotten larger then there isn’t much to keep Chase from becoming an elite young player.