It's no secret that James Washington's rookie season was disappointing. A second-round draft pick from Oklahoma State, Washington caught only 16 passes on 38 targets for 217 yards and one touchdown.
But 140 of those yards came in the Steelers' final four games. What changed in Washington's game is what makes him the Steelers' best candidate for a breakout season. Here's why:
Last week, Dale Lolley reported about Washington's progress in both his relationship with Ben Roethlisberger and his work to improve. Between Washington's loss of 15 pounds and that improved chemistry, he might be on his way to being the threat the Steelers need at wide receiver.
The loss of that weight obviously is meant to impact Washington's speed, but it's also to help his quickness in and out of his breaks. Route running was one of the stronger traits that separated him in college and it started off as one of his biggest weaknesses.
Watch his out route and how Desmond Trufant blanketed it in week five. Trufant is a talented veteran playing backed off man coverage and no part of Washington's route sells him from the out, resulting in a breakup:
The key to great routes is keeping cornerbacks guessing between different threats. Antonio Brown became the NFL's best receiver because his routes sold several different threats that disguised his true intentions. Getting to that skilled point of a career is a layered effort.
First a receiver has to sharply run each of their intended routes without wasting steps or moves that don't accomplish anything. The body control and coordination it takes to get to that point often makes for great playmakers. But combine that with the creative mixing of those well-defined routes and that makes an elite route runner.
Watch how Orlando Scandrick pins Washington to the sideline on this go route. Scandrick presses Washington at the line, indicating an aggressive challenge in man coverage. In this position, Scandrick has to maintain inside leverage on Washington.
When Scandrick backs off Washington at the snap, there's no threat posed to force Scandrick to maintain that inside leverage. Instead, Washington jumps right into his go route and Scandrick can comfortably close on him, forcing Roethlisberger to throw the ball away:
That's the lack of detail Washington had in his work through most of 2018. When you don't possess Tyreek Hill's speed, you have to find different ways to scare cornerbacks into respecting the threat you pose as a receiver.
But Washington is a humble hard-working young player that I've had confidence would find his way. And we saw flashes of him improving these parts of his game in the final quarter of the 2018 season.
From the 38 targets Washington received, 10 came on go routes. Nine of them were incomplete, most ending like the above shown play against Scandrick. But the one instance Washington won on a go route came in a huge moment against the Patriots.
Watch how he works against Jason McCourty, another good veteran cornerback, when pressed at the line. You can see at the start of the play that Washington's first steps froze McCourty as he had to respect the threat of him going inside. That allowed Washington to quickly cut outside of McCourty and create the separation for Roethlisberger to have a target.
Washington finishes the play with a heck of a catch, displaying the strong hands I wrote about when the Steelers drafted him last year:
Once Washington found some success, he used it as a foundation to keep cornerbacks guessing. His biggest play of the season was his out-and-up that gained 47 yards against the Bengals in the season finale. You can see how hard the cornerback bites on Washington's first cut, and how quickly Washington explodes past him for the big play:
That's the kind of work Washington has to show in 2019 to get open for Roethlisberger. But the other factor was learning how to create after a route is finished to work with what Roethlisberger likes.
There have been too many plays to list in Roethlisberger's career where the drawn-up routes have been thrown to the wind as his receivers improvised and created opportunities for huge plays with Roethlisberger. Brown was arguably the best Roethlisberger ever had in this department, so it will be important for another receiver to develop this kind of chemistry.
Washington flashed the ability to do this a couple times in 2018. But a big moment came against all-pro Stephon Gilmore, when Roethlisberger had to shuffle in the pocket to avoid pressure and Washington broke away from his curl route to present an easy first down target:
There's plenty of layers to address for Washington to improve, but each of them have been addressed in either his improvements in late 2018 or his offseason work in 2019. If he continues to sharpen his routes while diversifying his mixups to keep cornerbacks guessing, he'll be on his way.
The lost weight could be the boost that makes him that much harder to keep up with in his footwork in and out of his breaks. Keep an eye for more talk about his chemistry with Roethlisberger as we get closer to the NFL season. The development could be there to make Washington the biggest new threat on the Steelers' offense.
