Pittsburgh Is Trying Very Hard to Be Boring. DK Metcalf Is Not Cooperating.

The Pittsburgh Steelers changed almost everything.

They changed head coaches for the first time since the iPhone was introduced.

They brought in Mike McCarthy.

They added Michael Pittman Jr.

They brought Aaron Rodgers back for one final season because apparently there are still a few unresolved items from the 2011 Packers group chat.

And after all that?

The AutoDraftYears model projects Pittsburgh to score 22.0 points per game, 22nd in the NFL.

Basically where it was last year.

This feels very Steelers.

The franchise rearranged the living room, replaced the furniture, hired a new interior designer and somehow the couch is still in exactly the same place.

But there is one meaningful fantasy disagreement hiding inside all that stability.

DK Metcalf.

The market has him WR36.

The model has him WR15.

So the question isn't really whether Pittsburgh becomes a great offense.

The model doesn't think it does.

It's:

Can an ordinary offense still produce an obvious fantasy value?

2025: The Steelers won the division without solving the offense

The strange thing about Pittsburgh's 2025 season is that it worked.

Sort of.

The Steelers finished 10–7, won the AFC North and returned to the playoffs. They scored 397 total points, 23.4 per game, 15th in the NFL.

That's the successful version.

The less flattering version is that Pittsburgh started 4–1, went 2–5 over its next seven games and reached December sitting at 6–6. It eventually recovered enough to win the division, but stability was not exactly the theme.

Aaron Rodgers was...fine.

Which might be the most Pittsburgh quarterback sentence possible.

At age 42, he threw for 3,322 yards, 24 touchdowns and seven interceptions. Efficient enough. Functional enough. Rarely the reason the building needed to be evacuated.

Jaylen Warren quietly produced the best rushing season of his career: 958 yards on 211 carries, 4.5 yards per attempt and six rushing touchdowns, plus another 333 receiving yards.

DK Metcalf led the team with 850 receiving yards and six touchdowns despite missing the final two regular-season games because of suspension.

And yet the passing game never felt particularly deep.

Metcalf was the only Steelers receiver to reach 500 yards. Pat Freiermuth finished with 486. Calvin Austin III had 372. Running back Kenneth Gainwell actually led the team with 73 catches.

When defenses could reduce Metcalf's impact, Pittsburgh often struggled to produce the second answer. By November, even Mike Tomlin was talking about third-down problems limiting the entire offense.

Then came the playoff game.

Houston beat Pittsburgh 30–6.

The Steelers' offense produced six points in a home playoff game. Rodgers completed 17 of 33 passes for only 146 yards. Pittsburgh forced three turnovers and still couldn't score a touchdown.

That was the last game Mike Tomlin coached for Pittsburgh.

Two days later, after 19 seasons, he stepped down.

Winning division.

Home playoff game.

Six points.

Coach gone.

Very normal January.

And now almost everything around the offense is different

Mike McCarthy became only the Steelers' fourth head coach since 1969.

Pittsburgh then traded for Michael Pittman Jr. and gave him a new three-year contract.

Rodgers returned for another season, reuniting with the coach with whom he spent most of his Packers career.

That sounds like the setup for a substantially different offense.

The model says:

Eh.

AutoDraftYears projects 22.0 points per game, 22nd in the NFL. Its own 2025 offensive-scoring input was 22.4, so the forecast is essentially flat.

But underneath the scoring number, the shape changes.

*AutoDraftYears offensive scoring input. Public team scoring, including all points, was 23.4 per game in 2025.

That's the important distinction.

The model does not expect Pittsburgh to score significantly more.

It expects Pittsburgh to throw more and run more plays while arriving at roughly the same scoring destination.

That sounds frustrating for anyone trying to draft "the Steelers offense."

Fortunately, we don't have to.

If you're buying anything, buy the passing game

The positional environments:

Receiver is clearly the best fantasy real estate on this roster.

That makes sense.

The model expects a 3.4-point increase in pass rate and another 5.2 offensive snaps per game.

Those extra plays have to go somewhere.

And the historical comps reinforce the same idea.

The 30 offenses most similar to Pittsburgh's 2026 projection averaged 2.4 fantasy starters. They produced a top-12 quarterback only 10% of the time, but three top-36 wide receivers 97% of the time.

I am not interpreting 97% as divine prophecy.

Historical comps are not sitting at a stone tablet telling us Michael Pittman will finish WR31.

But if I'm deciding whether to invest in Pittsburgh's backs or receivers, this is not especially close.

The passing side is where I want to shop.

DK Metcalf is the reason to care

Here's the board:

Market and Model are ranks within the position. Edge is the model's position rank against the market's, after removing the drift that affects every player at that price — so it reads as “the model likes him this many places more than it likes the typical player who costs this much.” A call needs the edge to clear the position's bar (QB 5, RB 15, WR 11, TE 5 places), set at two-thirds of that position's own spread.

DK is the outlier.

Pick 77.

WR36.

Model WR15.

Even after removing the normal model-versus-market drift that exists at that draft price, his adjusted edge is still +23 positional spots. His Role score is 71. Risk is Low. Projected scoring is around 13 PPG.

And now we can connect that number to what actually happened.

Metcalf led Pittsburgh in receiving last year despite missing two games.

The Steelers then replaced a thin receiving room with Pittman.

They changed from Arthur Smith's offense to McCarthy.

And the model expects substantially more passing volume without requiring Pittsburgh to suddenly become an elite scoring offense.

That is a much more interesting DK case than:

Spreadsheet likes DK. Please draft accordingly.

The best part is the price.

I don't need WR15.

If DK finishes WR24 after costing WR36, great.

The market is giving the model room to be wrong.

Those are my favorite bets.

Doesn't Pittman hurt DK?

Possibly.

This is where we should resist the fantasy instinct to treat every additional good receiver like somebody stealing food from our plate.

Pittman absolutely adds target competition.

He also gives Pittsburgh something it frequently lacked in 2025:

another legitimate NFL receiver defenses have to care about.

The Steelers traded for Pittman in March after he spent six seasons in Indianapolis.

The model has him WR37 against a market price of WR44, a +9 adjusted edge.

Close.

Not enough to trigger the +11 WR buy threshold.

So I wouldn't chase Pittman.

But if his ADP slips?

Now I'm interested.

He is exactly the kind of player I want as the second piece of a passing environment the model likes more than the running environment.

Jaylen Warren is where price discipline matters

Warren was genuinely good in 2025.

That matters.

He didn't stumble into 958 rushing yards because somebody forgot to tackle him for four months. He averaged 4.5 yards per carry and set career highs in carries, rushing yards and rushing touchdowns.

The fantasy question is different.

He's priced RB29.

The model says RB26.

Adjusted edge: +6.

That's not enough.

And Pittsburgh's RB environment ranks 26th.

So Warren is fine.

Fine is allowed.

We don't have to turn every competent running back into an August movement.

Draft him near cost.

If "Steelers football" starts pushing him into a more expensive range because people envision 1995 Jerome Bettis emerging from a tunnel filled with smoke, I am happy to let someone else participate.

The offense itself is not the value

This might be the most important number on the page.

The market ranks Pittsburgh's total fantasy roster 28th.

The model ranks it 23rd.

Five places apart.

The threshold for calling an entire roster meaningfully mispriced is eight.

So despite a new head coach, a new WR2 and a new offensive structure, there is no compelling team-level bet here.

The market basically got Pittsburgh right.

This is a middle-to-lower-tier fantasy environment that historical comps suggest should produce two or three useful starters.

The mistake would be assuming that because the whole roster is fairly priced, every player must also be fairly priced.

That's not how markets work.

Costco can price the warehouse correctly and still accidentally put one television on clearance.

DK is the television.

What could make this wrong?

The model needs those extra plays.

Pittsburgh ran only 56.0 snaps per game last season.

The projection is 61.2.

Five plays every week is substantial.

The forecast also assumes Pittsburgh moves from a 57.9% pass rate to 61.3%.

If McCarthy's offense doesn't produce that shift—or Pittsburgh remains stuck in the same short-drive problems that periodically swallowed the 2025 offense—the receiver case gets weaker.

That's why the number I'm watching in September is simple:

Offensive snaps per game.

Around 61?

Good.

Back near 56?

Start lowering expectations.

Fantasy football occasionally allows us to monitor something without immediately declaring an emergency.

So what am I doing with Pittsburgh?

I'm not buying the Steelers.

I'm buying DK Metcalf.

That's the distinction.

Pittsburgh can remain a 22-point offense.

Rodgers can remain merely functional.

The Steelers can produce roughly 2.4 fantasy starters.

None of those things prevent WR36 from being too cheap for the top receiver in a passing environment the model ranks 14th.

Warren is fine at cost.

Pittman gets interesting if he falls.

Everybody else can remain where they are.

Pittsburgh changed coaches, added weapons and brought Rodgers back for one more year.

Maybe the offense changes completely.

The model isn't counting on it.

And that's sort of the point.

DK doesn't need Pittsburgh to become great.

He just needs WR36 to be wrong.

Sources: Auto Draft Years FF Model workbook — Team Data By Year, Team Stat Ranking, 2026 Team Context; Auto Draft Years 2026 consensus board (16 authoritative market sources); Player outcomes 2016–2025, Pro Football Reference via the project dataset. Team environment grades, forecasts and player model ranks are proprietary. Every figure on this page is generated from the dataset at build time; none is typed in by hand.