Steelers Getting Great Play From Receivers

Over the last few years it has seemed like the Steelers were going to develop a pretty big weakness at the wide receiver position. Hines Ward was clearly slowing down, the team parted ways with a rising Santonio Holmes, and a large amount of their hope was in a group of young, unproven receivers that were not very highly touted coming out of college.

However, it seems that this year the receiving core has actually been more of a strong point for the Steelers than anything.

It's not a big surprise to that many people that Mike Wallace has broken out the last two years, but the numbers he has put up this year have been very, very strong. In fact, when you look at the advanced statistics, he's one of the best in the entire league.

Wallace has a 1.34 WPA (win probability added) this year, which is 7th highest in the league. Wes Welker leads everybody with a 2.01 WPA. Another statistic called EPA/P (expected points added per pay) sheds more light on how good Wallace has been. He has added 0.70 points to this team per play, that's the 4th highest number in the league. The three receivers in front of him all play for the Green Bay Packers (James Jones, Jordy Nelson, and Greg Jennings). Wallace also has the 5th highest success rate in the league at 70%. Those stats are a lot to handle for people who haven't heard of them before, so go to advancednflstats.com to read up on them.

Wallace's counterpart, Antonio Brown has also had a very, very nice season. His WPA is 12th in the league at 1.03. He is 22nd in the league with 0.36 EPA/P and has a 51.2% success rate. Nobody is talking about Brown being a top-10 receiver, and you'd have to dig a little to find someone who thinks he's even top 25 or so, but he has done very well with the opportunity he has had.

These statistics are all coming from two guys that were picked outside of the 2nd round. Wallace was a 3rd-round pick and Brown went in the 6th-round. With Wallace's speed, it was obvious that he could turn into a legitimate NFL receiver, but Brown kind of came from nowhere.

The Steelers did a nice job grabbing these two guys in the draft and they have benefited big time from their performances this year. If they continue to get better with experience, the Steelers will not have to worry about their receiving core for a long time.