With prime draft season rapidly approaching, identifying players with the potential to outperform their current draft position is paramount in gaining an edge on your league mates. Our Mid-Summer Discounts series begins with a WR who is likely to return value at his current redraft cost.
Context:
- Positional finishes reflect a half PPR scoring format.
- Average Draft Position (ADP) and positional rankings are taken from Fantasy Pros half PPR data.
Diontae Johnson: ADP 83 – WR34
Despite playing in all 17 games last season, Johnson finished just WR39 in points scored. Year 1 of the post Ben Roethlisberger era proved to be an up and down campaign for the Steelers and the QB platoon of Mitch Trubisky and rookie Kenny Pickett did the team’s WRs no favors from a fantasy perspective. Looking forward to 2023, there are reasons to remain optimistic regarding a Johnson bounce back.
For starters, the team has done very little to add to their WR room. The rest of the depth chart consists of second year wide-out George Pickens, an unproven Calvin Austin and the shell of former pro bowler Allen Robinson. The lack of changes to the coaching staff are another factor working in Johnson’s favor, with the retention of offensive coordinator Matt Canada signaling a major plus for his 2023 outlook. In Canada’s two seasons as OC, Johnson has seen a total of 316 footballs fly his way. Finishing 2nd among WRs in targets in 2021 and tied for 6th in 2022, he figures to remain the top target in the Pittsburgh offense this year. As great as it is for a receiver to see a large number of targets, there’s no better way to make a fantasy manger’s day quite like finding the end zone. In what can only be described as a statistical anomaly, Johnson failed to score a single TD last season, despite seeing 147 targets. The next highest targeted WR to be held scoreless for an entire season was Amani Toomer with 106 targets all the way back in 2004. To be clear, Johnson isn’t a positive TD regression “candidate”, he’s the poster boy to experience better luck in the scoring department this year.
At his current price point on the round 7 & 8 borderline, fantasy managers have gone too far holding his underwhelming 2022 campaign against him. What we have here is a proven producer (2 top 24 finishes on his resume) who is perfectly healthy, in the prime of his career (at age 27) and is being drafted as a back end WR3. Between his OC returning, his projected target volume and inevitable positive TD regression coming his way, all signs are pointing to Johnson being a screaming value at cost.
