What went wrong for JuJu Smith-Schuster in 2019 and why he’ll bounce back

Juju Smith-Schuster was set to be the NFL’s next big thing. The next in a long line of Pittsburgh Steelers wide receivers that transcends draft position to emerge among the league’s elite players. From Hines Ward in the third-round to Antonio Brown in the fifth-round– to second-round gem Juju Smith-Schuster. 

The passing of the torch was in motion long before Brown’s fall from grace with the NFL. But when the league’s most infamous troubled star took his talents from Pittsburgh to the Raiders, Smith-Schuster’s path to stardom was clearer than ever. In fact, after two consecutive years of solid production, the young Steelers’ star began to develop a solid name for himself– all that was left was to take the leap from great to elite.

So… what happened? Juju got his chance to be the team’s undisputed number one wide receiver for the first time in his pro career. And after turning 166 targets into 111 catches for over 1,400 yards as the WR2 in 2018, it looked as though Smith-Schuster was on track to join the ranks of Julio Jones, DeAndre Hopkins and dare I say… Antonio Brown.

But Smith-Schuster’s numbers weren’t just a league below that class of NFL elites– they were a league below the other players on his own team. After a 2018 season ranked in NFL’s top ten in targets, receptions, and yards– Juju saw fewer targets than James Washington, caught fewer passes than Jaylen Samuels, and gained fewer receiving yards than Dionte Johnson.

So again I ask… what happened? And the million-dollar question in all of this: Was 2019 a blip on the radar for a future Hall-of-Famer, or was it a troubling sign of things to come? The answer lies somewhere in the middle, but things should still be good for the Steelers’ pass-catcher moving forward.

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