We have already had a lot of player movement, and free agency has not officially started.
On Sunday night, we received more news with DK Metcalf being traded to the Pittsburgh Steelers, where he will ink a five-year, $150 million contract.
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DK Metcalf 2025 Fantasy Outlook
We are six years into Metcalf’s career, and he has had just one season in which he ended the year as a top-20 scorer in points per game.
DK Metcalf Career Stats
| Year | Age | Gm | Tgt | Rec | ReYd | ReTD | PPR/Gm | PPG Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 22 | 16 | 100 | 58 | 900 | 7 | 13.3 | 26 |
| 2020 | 23 | 16 | 129 | 83 | 1303 | 10 | 14.1 | 23 |
| 2021 | 24 | 17 | 129 | 75 | 967 | 12 | 11.7 | 43 |
| 2022 | 25 | 17 | 141 | 90 | 1048 | 6 | 16.9 | 10 |
| 2023 | 26 | 16 | 119 | 66 | 1114 | 8 | 14.4 | 23 |
| 2024 | 27 | 15 | 108 | 66 | 992 | 5 | 12.7 | 33 |
Metcalf is coming off a disappointing season in Seattle, ending the year with the second-lowest fantasy output of his career.
It was not all bad, however.
He opened the season by going over 100 yards in three opening four games and averaged 15.1 PPR points per game through Week 7.
He suffered a knee injury in that Week 7 game against Atlanta and was never the same.
DK Metcalf 2024 Per Game Splits
| Weeks | Tgt | Rec | ReYd | PPR | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-7 | 8.7 | 5.0 | 81.1 | 15.1 | 13 |
| 11-18 | 5.9 | 3.9 | 53.0 | 10.7 | 42 |
Returning from injury, Metcalf played behind the offense flowing through Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
He had four or fewer receptions in each of the final seven games to close the season.
He ended the year 31st in ESPN's Open Score for wide receivers, his lowest grade in that metric since his rookie season.
Outside of his injury, Metcalf also struggled to find consistent targets with a high success rate in Ryan Grubb’s offense.
DK Metcalf Advanced Stats
| Year | Yds/Rt | Tar/Rt | DeepTgt% |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 1.69 | 18.8% | 20.0% |
| 2020 | 2.07 | 20.5% | 23.3% |
| 2021 | 1.95 | 26.0% | 23.3% |
| 2022 | 1.82 | 24.4% | 12.1% |
| 2023 | 2.05 | 21.9% | 21.8% |
| 2024 | 1.81 | 19.7% | 31.5% |
Metcalf is coming off a year where he was forced to live on his highest rate of targets downfield.
31.5% of his targets came 20 or more yards downfield, the highest career rate.
Despite missing two games, Metcalf had 34 of those targets, the most in a season.
As a byproduct, 41 of his targets ended up as contested catches, the most in the NFL last season.
If you are combining the table directly above with the one to open things up, you can spot that Metcalf’s best fantasy season coincided with his lowest dependency on deep targets.
The best fantasy assets in today’s NFL have to have access to shorter throws, which provide a safety net for their floors while boosting their ceilings.
Living on a diet of downfield targets, Metcalf had his lowest target rate per route run since his rookie season.
Is Metcalf’s short-term utilization outlook going to improve in an Arthur Smith offense?
That is a tough bet to make.
Pittsburgh wide receivers averaged 12.9 air yards per target last season, the most in the NFL.
18.1% of their wide receiver routes were Go routes, the second-highest rate in the league.
Arthur Smith Offenses
| Year | Tm | Pass Play | DB% | Rank | PROE% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | TEN | 504 | 56.0% | 29 | -6.0% |
| 2020 | TEN | 510 | 51.4% | 30 | -9.0% |
| 2021 | ATL | 613 | 62.5% | 11 | -1.0% |
| 2022 | ATL | 452 | 48.1% | 32 | -13.0% |
| 2023 | ATL | 570 | 54.9% | 30 | -9.0% |
| 2024 | PIT | 548 | 53.9% | 28 | -7.0% |
The Seahawks ran 99 more passing plays than the Steelers last season.
Smith has never run an offense that has thrown the football above pass rate expectations, adjusting for game scripts.
This transition to Pittsburgh hurts both Metcalf and George Pickens in the short term in this system.
Both players have per-target upside, but each must be hyper-efficient on limited volume.
That leaves them as volatile weekly producers in the boom-or-bust WR3/WR4 area of drafts.
Pickens was already the WR40 in PPR points per game last season (11.7) when he controlled the target volume when Pittsburgh did throw.
Pickens was targeted on 23.7% of his routes, which was WR19 among receivers to run 300 or more routes.
When he was on the field, Pickens accounted for 29.5% of Pittsburgh's targets and 48.3% of the team’s air yards, rates that will take a severe hit with Metcalf joining the roster.
The Steelers do not have a quarterback in place at the moment.
If Pittsburgh does not look elsewhere for a new quarterback and we had to choose between the lesser of two evils, Russell Wilson would be preferred over Justin Fields from a fantasy stance.
Metcalf and Wilson have a history from Seattle, while Wilson was more accurate than Fields a year ago.
Wilson had a 9.8% inaccurate throw rate (16th among passers with over 100 attempts) compared to a 10.6% rate by Fields (23rd).
Seahawks 2025 Fantasy Outlook
On the Seattle side, much remains to be decided over the remainder of the offseason, but Jaxon Smith–Njigba is set up to be the focal point of this passing game when the roster settles.
Seattle will still address quarterback and wide receiver this offseason after the recent moves made this past week.
As of now, only Smith-Njigba, Jake Bobo, and Dareke Young are on the roster at the receiver position.
Smith-Njigba closed his second season on a high note, finishing as the WR7 on fantasy points from Week 8 to the end of the season.
Heading into his third season, Smith-Njigba has run 180 routes with Metcalf off the field, drawing a target on 23.3% of those routes with 2.55 yards per route run.
