I'm heading back to the Steelers' OTAs this afternoon, hoping to complete a Bud Dupree piece I've been compiling. No doubt, that'll be well received.
In the interim, here's a slice of a conversation I had with Donte Moncrief, who's been described as a stretch-the-field guy since his acquisition out of free agency ... but that hasn't really held since his arrival here. It's mostly been about his overall skill set, not just his 4.40 speed to blow by corners in a straight line.
I asked about that:
This is at least a little worrisome. With more than two-thirds of JuJu Smith-Schuster's catches in 2018 having come from the slot, and with everyone else in the receiving corps other than James Washington also being best suited for the slot -- Ryan Switzer, Eli Rogers, Diontae Johnson, maybe even Vance McDonald, if one considers where he lines up -- it'll behoove the Steelers and Moncrief to make it happen wide.
But, as our Chris Carter broke down beautifully a couple weeks ago, those routes haven't always been fruitful for Moncrief. And statistically, in his five-year NFL career, just 31 of his 200 catches have gone for 20-plus yards, seven of those for 40-plus yards. Some of that's due to the less-than-spectacular quarterbacks with whom he's worked -- hello, Blake Bortles -- but it's also not exactly encouraging history.
If nothing else, it'd be helpful for Ben Roethlisberger and Moncrief to try an awful lot of this in Latrobe.
Ben himself hasn't sounded any note about Moncrief needing to go deep, and maybe that's because he's got his own wait-and-see attitude about whether it'll work.
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