Roman Wilson

No one saw that coming.

But with Michael Pittman Jr., Roman Wilson, and Ben Skoranek out, and Brandon Smith finally coming into his own with two receptions for 24 yards against the New Orleans Saints in Paris, Well, the Steelers need to be hunting for a wide receiver.

The good news is this year there are no excuses.

Omar Khan cannot go out and find a Mike Williams.

This is not a you're going to hope for the best in Calvin Austin season.

and DK Metcalf type of year.

This is a, if everything goes right, you have DK Metcalf, Jeremy Bernard, Roman Wilson by the end of the year, Ben Skoranek's back, and hopefully another name that could surpass at least two or three of those guys on the depth chart.

That is the opportunity in front of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Go for a name that makes a difference.

And do not hesitate on it because that is going to be the difference between week 15 coming up and you need two big wins and your wide receivers are MBS, Roman Wilson, and Jeremy Bernard.

You know what I mean? Go figure it out.

Hi, Noah.

Now we'll keep going here with another rookie.

And I'm going to talk about the Steelers second round wide receiver, Jeremy Bernard, because after two strong weeks without Michael Pittman and Roman Wilson getting hurt, he has a stinker.

The entire offense did.

He had just three catches for 27 yards in this game.

I think he had a big third or fourth down catch late in the game for the Steelers in their game in Paris.

Now, look, this was a, this was a sinker of a game.

aaron rogers comes out here only throws 30 times they kind of played with a lead the entire time uh 212 yards uh but out of those 212 yards 7.1 yards per attempt and a lot of it and i mean a lot of it was check down targets to the running backs dk mccaff caught a 50 yard ball in the first half did nothing other than that rico dotter returns from injury six catches jaylen warren three catches right so just check down targets i mean nine of the nine of the 19 completions for aaron rogers were check down targets to his running backs aaron rogers has been doing this all season long he's been checking it down wide receiver screens to jeremy bernard and dk mccaff short crossers to all these guys including roman wilson when he was healthy pat fryermuth right but he was doing it like spamming the checkdowns this past week even more so it ended up being a bad game for everybody involved like they were just trying to get out of there with the win and for in their case they did but overall The last three weeks since Jeremy Bernard has become a bigger part of the offense tied for a team high 26% target share.

So obviously, like even with this bad week stinker in there, he's still being targeted at a very above average rate 26% of the time.

So that'd at least be kind of interesting.

But you know what? Omar Khan and those folks, they know a lot better than we do the prognosis for Roman Wilson, how long he might be out with that hand, finger, thumb injury, whatever it is.

Then Ben Skoronek's calf, Michael Pittman Jr.'s foot.

But that's a lot of names that I just rattled off there.

The thing is, though, is I keep trying to tell people who are like, oh, they don't have enough explosive places.

I'm like, they're down Roman Wilson and Michael Pittman, though, too.

Two guys they were expecting to contribute a lot this year.

So I'm like, you know, it's like, I don't know what their injury status is on those two, but I don't know.

like, I don't want to do jumbo package.

pass that guess what in two weeks when Roman Wilson's back and the receiving core is healthy again you won't see as much jumbo package or when you play a team that stops the run extremely well but isn't good against the pass you won't see that because the coaching staff plays to the strengths and weaknesses of the opponents that they're facing and a clear weakness that I'm starting to identify is that run defense for the Cleveland Browns surprising you'd think they'd be better against the run but that's a weakness for them for whatever reason they don't do it well 116 yards allowed on the ground overall for the season and as you mentioned Tony Pollard last week put up over 120 he found the end zone three times on the ground on this Cleveland defense so the defense for the Browns is scary it's got really good players at every level of that defense but there's a very glaring weakness that is starting to expose itself for this Browns defense and They're not handling it as well as, say, the Steelers are handling their weakness of lacking in the secondary and their pass defense.

Steelers are doing a good job of surviving that.

They're

However, I'm not convinced that he's exactly what the Pittsburgh Steelers need.

You know, the Steelers have two injured receivers, well, three, Skronic, but then Pittman and Roman Wilson are the two that have significant roles in the offense.

And of those two, I believe Pittman to be the more seriously injured and also the less replaceable, as the Steelers do have Jeremy Bernard, who has played pretty well.

And although he can play outside, I think it's pretty clear he is better in the slot.

We are sure that Roman Wilson, when he returns, is better in the slot.

We saw him outside last year.

It did not go very well.

There will be a dead cap hit if they want to go down that road.

And, of course, Michael Pittman.

and Roman Wilson, those guys are on injured reserve.

But some of these familiar names are being tossed around again for the Steelers as targets.

And we just saw the Seahawks make a deal with the Colts earlier today where Indianapolis was able to acquire a couple of draft picks for one of their better offensive linemen.

And that being there's a lot of speculation and I guess a lot of smoke coming from kind of national media guys saying that, you know, look for the Steelers to try to be active here in the trade market, specifically for a wide receiver here over the next couple of weeks here.

So you'd have to think at the very least they are looking around because Michael Pittman, Lord knows when he might be back.

Roman Wilson, as you mentioned, also still on IR.

We'll see how long that ends up.

Um, Cooper's had a great first two weeks, but I think Garrett Wilson's tirade, um, on the sideline, I think they're going to make sure that Garrett Wilson stays happy.

Um, and once, uh, Roman Wilson comes back, I think Bernard kind of either blends in or fizzles out a little bit.

So he's automatically number three.

Yeah.