As we gear up to the start of the NFL season, Football Absurdity is going to bring you a comprehensive breakdown of every notable player that will be available in fantasy football drafts. We only look at the past three seasons for a player. This is because anyone who is looking at 2016 to figure out what to do in 2020 had better be Cam Newton looking for a Super Bowl do-over. 2019 JuJu Smith-Schuster owners are also looking for a do-over, will 2020 see him return to WR1 heights?
JuJu Smith-Schuster ADP and AAV:
Standard: WR19, 45 overall
PPR: WR14, 34 overall
Average Auction Value: $23
JuJu Smith-Schuster Statistics:
| Year | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 |
| G | 12 | 16 | 14 |
| GS | 12 | 13 | 7 |
| Tgt | 70 | 166 | 79 |
| Rec | 42 | 111 | 58 |
| Yards | 552 | 1426 | 917 |
| TD | 3 | 7 | 7 |
| Tgt/G | 4.38 | 10.38 | 4.94 |
| Rec/G | 2.63 | 6.94 | 3.63 |
| Rec% | 60.0% | 66.9% | 73.4% |
| Yds/Tgt | 7.89 | 8.59 | 11.61 |
| Yds/Rec | 13.14 | 12.85 | 15.81 |
| Year | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 |
| Std Pts | 71.2 | 185.9 | 139.7 |
| HPPR Pts | 92.2 | 241.4 | 168.7 |
| PPR Pts | 113.2 | 296.9 | 197.7 |
| Pts/G | 5.9 | 11.6 | 10.0 |
| HPPR Pts/G | 7.7 | 15.1 | 12.1 |
| PPR Pts/G | 9.4 | 18.6 | 14.1 |
| Pts/Tgt | 1.02 | 1.12 | 1.77 |
| Pts/Tgt (HPPR) | 1.32 | 1.45 | 2.14 |
| Pts/Tgt (PPR) | 1.62 | 1.79 | 2.50 |
| Year | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 |
| Air Yards | 707 | 1394 | 811 |
| aDOT | 10.1 | 8.4 | 10.3 |
| YAC | 229 | 672 | 430 |
| YAC/Tgt | 3.27 | 4.07 | 5.44 |
| YAC/Rec | 5.45 | 6.11 | 7.41 |
| YAC% | 41.5% | 48.9% | 46.9% |
| AYMS | 23% | 26% | 18% |
| Tgt MS | 17% | 24% | 16% |
JuJu Smith-Schuster Overview:
Remember that photograph in Back to the Future, the one where Marty McFly’s family disappears one-by-one? Well, JuJu must have been doing some time-travel tomfoolery, as he’s seen Le’Veon Bell, Antonio Brown, and Ben Roethlisberger disappear from the Steelers’ field over the past two seasons. But, someone, somewhere just punched their high school bully in the head, because Big Ben seems ready to go for the 2020 season. If everything breaks like it should, Smith-Schuster seems all but a lock to finish as a back-end WR1.
Everything went wrong for JuJu Smith-Schuster last year. Not only did he have to deal with a cavalcade of garbage throwing him the football, he dealt with a knee injury that cost him time and hampered him down the stretch, and left a game with a concussion. JuJu is young, and those were his first injuries to cost him time since 2017, though it is worth noting that the 23-year-old now has three concussions in as many seasons in the NFL.
Still, JuJu has done some incredible things for someone his age. Only seven wide receivers in NFL history have more yardage than he has before his 24th birthday, and his 17 touchdowns are the fifteenth-most for such a young wide receiver. He’s had a ton of volume already in his career, but it’s still impressive he pulled that off spending a year with guys like Mason Rudolph and Duck Hodges throwing him the football.
JuJu Smith-Schuster Draft Strategy:
JuJu Smith-Schuster Auction Value: $34
Draft Ranking: Find out for your league settings in a Beersheet!
Whether in leagues that reward receptions or not, JuJu’s going near the third-round/fourth-round tier. That’s just about perfect: His high target expectations make him a decent end-of-the-third wide receiver in PPR leagues, and non-PPR should wait to see if he falls to the 4th round. In auction drafts, JuJu is going in the mid-$30s. If Adam Thielen, Kenny Golladay, and D.J. Moore have all gone to other teams, I don’t mind throwing a few extra bucks to get Smith-Schuster, the last person I have ranked in that tier. I’d still much rather go $5 more for Thielen, Golladay, and DJ Moore because their performance is not tied to the House of Ben staying upright.
Best Case Scenario:
JuJu Smith-Schuster is a top-flight WR1. Pittsburgh’s offense is fantasy relevant again. God waits until after the fantasy season to strike Ben Roethlisberger with a lightning bolt.
Worst Case Scenario:
Either Roethlisberger or Smith-Schuster gets an injury that lingers. Again, JuJu becomes fantasy irrelevant. Tears of fantasy owners cause the Steel Curtain to rust. I am crushed under the weight of a thousand irrelevant-but-forced metaphors
[Statistics are sourced from pro-football-reference.com and airyards.com]
