James Washington needs an expanded role in Steelers' offense
The Steelers’ offense severely struggled against the Patriots. They were blanketed in coverage and couldn’t consistently run the football. The Patriots did a great job of game planning against Pittsburgh, but the Steelers’ execution was not up to par regardless.
Seattle’s defense presents a whole new challenge this week. Their defensive front will be much more aggressive than New England’s and it will be a challenging task to run the football. Passes will have to come out of Ben Roethlisberger’s hands quickly, or the Steelers will struggle in the passing game as well.
Seattle blitzed quite a bit out of their nickel package last week against the Bengals. Cincinnati had a good answer to it and were very successful throwing the football. If Seattle presents a similar game plan on Sunday, the Steelers’ best way to combat this will be the short routes like slants, curls, in or out routes, and maybe the crossing routes that gashed the Steelers in New England.
Pittsburgh does need to make a better effort to establish the run, but not overcompensate just for the sake of having a more balanced attack. With a defense as aggressive as Seattle can be, the passing game will be crucial for a victory over the Seahawks.
The Steelers can come up with the perfect scheme in every week, but it won’t matter unless they get better production from their receivers. We all expect more from JuJu Smith-Schuster, and I believe we will see that even as early as this week. But there’s another receiver who needs to be given an opportunity: James Washington.
As a matter of fact, Washington along with rookie Diontae Johnson should be given expanded roles. Understandably, Johnson’s role in the offense should evolve more slowly as he gets used to the NFL game and learns the Steelers’ playbook.
On the other hand, Washington is a second-year receiver. He’s got a grasp on the playbook and even with the limited time he has played, should have a familiarity with the speed of the NFL game. And he’ll only get more accustomed to NFL-caliber coverage with playing time.
Washington played only 52% of the offensive snaps this past week. The three receivers that finished ahead of him were JuJu and Donte Moncrief (both played 90%) and Ryan Switzer, who played 67% of the snaps.
I like Ryan Switzer. He’s a great guy and has a specific role in the offense. There is no way he should be playing more than James Washington. Washington is primarily an outside receiver while Switzer is limited to only playing out of the slot. With the depth chart the way it is, simple math dictates exactly what happened in New England. Since the Steelers will line up three receivers quite often, it makes sense that we saw JuJu and Moncrief get on the field a lot, with Switzer being the primary receiver in the slot.
Even though JuJu is primarily an outside receiver, he can play out of the slot. And if anything, he’ll create huge mismatches when he lines up there. JuJu shouldn’t be shackled to the slot because he is a dangerous outside threat as well, but it wouldn’t hurt to give JuJu more looks out of the slot to give Washington some more time on the field. This Sunday could be perfect for an idea like this. With Seattle being an aggressive defense, JuJu could be a huge threat if Seattle’s linebackers get forced into coverage on JuJu.
Another pathway to more snaps for Washington is simply playing him over Moncrief. The former Colt and Jaguar was brought in during free agency to step into that number two spot on the depth chart. But after an abysmal four-drop performance in New England, that is something you simply cannot ignore.
I would bet serious money Moncrief doesn’t have a performance that bad again all year. But I’ve lost bets before and if Moncrief continues to struggle, his leash needs get shorter faster rather than slower.
With the absence of Antonio Brown, the Steelers’ offense may live or die depending on how these other receivers do. Last week, Bill Belichick took away JuJu and the ground game and dared the Steelers to beat him with their secondary receivers. We saw how all of that went. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see other teams follow suit and challenge the Steelers in a similar matter.
James Washington is a former second-round pick and the Steelers need to eventually find more ways to get him involved. His ceiling is very high and the only way we will find out if he can ever hit that potential is through an expanded role. It’s time to let the second-year pro loose. Let’s see what he can do.
