Despite plenty of other wide receivers getting new deals and getting paid fairly handsomely for their services, free agent JuJu Smith-Schuster is still without a contract.
Why is that? Is it his "brand building" as so many have speculated? Does he dance on too many logos? What about that Tik Tok presence…that's gotta be it, right? Running around in a Dolphins uniform on Fortnite?
The Fan Morning Show with Colin Dunlap, Chris Mack and Jim Colony discussed this very thing on Friday and laid out what they think is the real reason, or reasons, why JuJu is still contract-less.
"I've never argued that JuJu Smith-Schuster is Antonio Brown. He's a proven complimentary piece. There are few true number one receivers in the league. I think our opinion has been skewed a bit because of how good AB was when he was here. He's no AB, but who the hell is? Too many people are conflating issues," said Dunlap.
"[JuJu] not getting paid to this point has zero to do with his social media even as some want it so badly for it to be about his social media. What it has to do with is the fact that he didn't have great numbers last year and people are looking at him right now as a complimentary piece that's a slot receiver and a number two."
Chris Mack backed that up.
"If you're choosing to focus on the Tik Tok and the social media stuff, it's because you don't want to talk about the actual football aspect of this. The actual football aspect would tell you that this is a guy who thinks he's a number one, was cast as a number one in the last couple of years, but may not be a number one for the teams that are looking for wide receivers on the open market. He's certainly not fulfilling those needs at the expected price that he thought he was going to get on the open market.
He may have to take a one-year 'prove it' deal to prove to people that he can be more number one capable. But if you're trying to cast it as a, 'Well, people don't like that Tik Tok nonsense, they don't want to have to deal with that,' that has nothing to do with it. It has everything to do with the football part of the equation.
Jim Colony said that Antonio Brown's actions may have been detrimental to JuJu.
"The worst thing that happened for him was AB melting down and going completely off the rails. Without AB it showed that JuJu is not a number one receiver and when he became 'the guy' with a different skillset, he's not a number one. But he's still going to do well for himself."
The guys all agree that JuJu's stats were impacted by the nature of the Steelers offense. They didn't go down the field a lot and used JuJu as an underneath receiver for virtually the entire season.
So is it really about being a social media star obsessed with "building a brand" or is it more for actual football reasons?
