DK’s Daily Shot of Steelers: Oh, no … WR2 again?

DK’s Daily Shot of Steelers: Oh, no … WR2 again?

[Music] Good news, Joey Porter and Alex Highmith could be back as soon as Sunday. Not so good news, Calvin Austin’s going to be out a while. Good morning to you. Good Tuesday morning. I’m Dan Kawachovich of DK Pittsburgh Sports. This is Daily Shot of Steelers presented by FanDuel. comes your way bright and early every weekday if you’re into hockey and/or baseball. I also offer daily shots of Penguins and Pirates. And on this NHL opening day, I’m here in New York to cover Penguins versus Rangers at Madison Square Garden while the football team back home tries to figure out how to make an offense work with only one wide receiver. Not to be rude here, but let’s call it what it is. Let’s call it what it’s been throughout the summer. It’s been a DK Metaf offense as it relates to wide receivers. It’s been that on the fields of Latroe. It’s been that in practices. And you’d better believe it’s been that in games. And that’s okay. That’s fine as long as he’s okay and as long as he’s fine. with Austin going down with a shoulder injury in Ireland and then with Austin acknowledging yesterday after practice on the southside that it’s not looking like it’s going to mend itself anytime soon. The same question that everybody on the outside has been asking all along it just keeps getting asked only now with more punctuation. That is of course when is Omar Khan going to get himself a WR2? Now the question can be asked with the Steelers already having shown that they have a WR2 and that really is how it’s worked if you think about it because the doubts were cast on Austin that he wasn’t going to be that guy that he wasn’t going to be capable of it or as some people would point out because of his small stature he was going to be more susceptible to injury than a bigger athlete might. Whatever your stance might be on this subject, the very real scenario remains right now that this offense has Metaf at receiver and then uh bunch of blank spots on the depth chart and then Scotty Miller, Roman Wilson, Ben Scoranic. Now the quarterbacks, all of them, all of the quarterbacks love throwing to Miller. So, I can promise you that the quarterbacks aren’t going to be the ones setting off any alarm bells around the facility. Aaron Rodgers is not an exception to that. The fans love Roman. The fans believe that Wilson has been held back for some reason, that he’s been subject to an unfair moving train that he never got a chance to catch up to. that I don’t know, for whatever reason, the people who drafted him and groomed him are against him. I don’t know, but Wilson has yet to prove a solitary thing in anger on an NFL field. And Skironic, as wonderful as he is on special teams and as neat as that touchdown was in New Jersey, nobody’s looking at him as a realistic WR2 option either. Nor should they. Nor should they. The team does need an alternate receiving target. The team does need on top of that, and remember this is the point that I’ve been pounding on this all along, somebody who could fill in for Metaf in the event that he gets hurt. That player is not on this roster. And I don’t even just mean at a performance level. I’m talking about just someone who could run those routes to have that kind of identity. There’s no one like that here. But are there people who can catch the football? Yeah. Yeah, there are. And this is where this relative outcry, at least from what I can gather about WR2 that’s been resuscitated is still kind of missing the major mark here. And that’s that the Steelers have a lot of receivers, meaning people who can catch the football. They have so many in fact that they essentially benched two of them in Dublin. Those of course being John Smith and Pat Frimouth. Neither of whom saw more than 16 offensive snaps in that game. Now they knew in advance as Fri would acknowledge upon returning that they weren’t going to see a whole lot of action because there was a special strategy to go against Brian Flores’s defense with the Vikings. they were going to have Spencer Anderson out there as a sixth offensive lineman. Spence did that and did it well to the tune of 19 snaps, more than either of those two tight ends got. And Darnell Washington, the other tight end, became the tight end for that day. 48 out of 53 total snaps he was out there. All but five snaps. He was the tight end. And in addition to helping the line kind of solidify itself, specifically his old friend Brick Jones, and Darnell brought in a couple of timely catches, made some things happen, played a really nice TE1 kind of game. So, what do you do without an Austin? And which benefits you more? bringing in somebody from the outside to learn a whole new offense or if it’s somebody who’s still sitting around as a free agent working out all the couch kinks or just telling someone like Smith or Frier, hey, instead of lining up over here, can you just line up like Yeah, about eight or nine feet in this d. Yeah. Okay, that’s perfect. That’s that’s all you need to do here. There’s not a respectfully there’s not even really an issue here. Would I like to see Omar go and spend the remainder of his gazillions of dollars that he has in cap space? Yes. Would I welcome seeing a deepening of the wide receiver room? Yes, but only as I laid out earlier, meaning actual replacement depth behind Metaf. Would I welcome seeing an additional wide receiver who would be more in the how do I put this without getting my head bitten off? more in the good Deontay mold there, meaning someone who’s a really, really good route runner who can get open, get open quickly and address, you know, some of your other offensive shortcomings. Would I welcome that? Yes. Yes. Do I see this as dire? No. No. If anything, one significant priority for this offense between now and if not Cleveland and maybe the Cincinnati game that follows that Arthur Smith and Mike Tomlin need to go at pretty hard is how do you get these tight ends involved while you also need to have your offensive line functioning with training wheels? And that’s what they were serving as Washington and Anderson in Ireland. There’s no reason to tap dance around this topic. An NFL offensive line needed two extra people to do the jobs of five. That’s not a great place for any offense to be. Needing one additional person is ownorous on an offense. They needed two. And lucky for them, one of them, Washington, can also catch footballs on the side. But is that the highest and best use of the people that you’ve got? No. This is a team that can’t convert on third downs, but they’ve got two third down conversion prototypes standing on the sideline. Smith had, sit down for this, 55 first down conversions out of his 88 catches for the Dolphins last season. 55 out of 88. And he was watching from the sideline over there in Ireland. All except for 16 snaps. Frimouth, I know everybody’s down on Pat right now. You shouldn’t be. He’s a good football player. Frimouth also has a history of delivering first downs. You can love what Darnell and Spence did over there. You can also acknowledge that Darnell and Spence aren’t going to be getting you first downs. Certainly not the way the other two guys could and should. So, let’s stick to the subject at hand, which when it comes to this offense is always, always, always the line. When we come back, J1Q [Music] This segment of Daily Shot is brought to you by our good friends at Mike’s Beer Bar. They’re located on Federal Street, directly across from PNC Park. Mike has more than 500 beers on tap, including from more than 50 local breweries. Stop in and say hello. Tell Mike we sent you. Mike’s Beer Bar. Football season’s finally here. Time to check out the latest odds, futures, and win totals on the FanDuel sports book. Think the Steelers are headed to the Super Bowl? Lock in your bets today. Whatever your game, FanDuel Sportsbook delivers the latest lines, futures, and specials so you can join in on all the action. Hey guys, if you’re planning to see a Steelers game, use the Game Time app to get your tickets. You can snag new ticket deals before anyone if you set it into your app alerts. The app is easy to use. No surprise fees at checkout. You can see your seat view before buying, and you’re getting legit tickets delivered on time. If you’re not much of a planner, you can get lastminute deals on tickets right up to the start of the event. Lowest price guaranteed or Game Time will credit you 110% of the difference. Download the Game Time app and enter the code DK Steelers into your app profile to get $20 off your first purchase. [Music] Today’s J1Q comes from Anthony Owens who says, “Hey DK, you said on one of the shows from Ireland, something to the effect of how in Arthur Smith’s offense, if you’re a tight end and you can’t block, you won’t get on the field due to the design and philosophy of the scheme.” Well, Smith knows John Smith well and therefore he knows that he can’t block well. He might be the worst blocking tight end on the roster. So why in the world did the Steelers go and get him? Anthony John Smith is coming off a season. I’m going to repeat these statistics just for effect in which he caught 88 passes more than anybody else on the Miami roster and 55 of those were for first downs. There is no reality, analytical or otherwise, where that doesn’t bring immense value to an entire football team, not just an offense. You have to be able to convert on third downs. You have to be able to get those done. You have to be able to move the sticks to keep your defense rested and all this other stuff that you already know. And sure, Arthur knew everything about Jonnu Smith. This is now Janu’s third different NFL team working under Arthur. I’m going to dispute your characterization, although not like hotly or whatever, that John is a terrible blocker. He might be the worst on the team, but I don’t even know about that. That Darnell Washington is on another level entirely when it comes to blocking tight ends. There’s a very real school of thought that he already should be a left tackle for somebody, but I don’t know that that should be a fair bar for either John Smith or Pat Frimouth. Both of whom are really kind of the same player when it comes to blocking. I don’t know that one is better or worse than the other. If you want the blunt truth here, I don’t believe that either John Smith or Pat Frymouth was blocking as well as they can heading into that game in Ireland. And I believe that’s part of the reason, maybe a big part, that that specific strategy against the Vikings was adopted and that it was adopted unapologetically. Not one person publicly or otherwise from above has suggested anything differently. Maybe Mike Tomlin will in his press conference today where I’m sure the subject is going to come up and maybe there will be a little bit more insight into exactly why that move was made over there or those moves I should say. But uh let’s let’s take today’s show and end it on a a positive note. I’m feeling good about things. I’m big lifelong hockey guy. I’m excited about a new season always. It’s kind of cool in its own way that it’s here in New York. So, I’ll leave you with this. Darnell Washington from the day he was drafted has had to scratch and claw one thing at a time just to get on the field. Well, Darnell didn’t scratch and claw in Ireland. He mowed people down. He made a difference. He might have been the Steelers most important player. And he set himself up, at least in my eyes, as someone who, well, you’d look pretty stupid leaving him off the field if he can do that for you. even if it’s just a couple of catches. If he can take your team’s greatest weakness and by his mere existence, by just being a tight end, turn it into a strength. What are you doing? What are you doing? This guy’s not three on this depth chart. He might not be a three on many depth charts in the NFL, if any. So there, take your positive. Take Darnell going out there and showing definitively, demonstratively what it is that he can deliver to this offense. That happened. That can’t be erased. That’s on film, as the football people like to say. I appreciate the question. I appreciate everybody listening to Daily Shot of Steelers. Going to try like heck to find a place here somewhere in Manhattan to do the double shot at 400 p.m. with Chris Hack back home. Hope you can check that out on the DK Pittsburgh Sports app. If you have the app and you don’t like the ads, you don’t like that you can’t comment and all that other stuff, email me. Email me directly dkdpittsburghports.com. [Music] I’ll hook you up with a massive discount. Talk to you guys later. [Music]

Oh, no … we’re still talking about WR2? Again?

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