Michael Pittman Jr. Fantasy Autopsy: What Killed His Season, and Where Should We Draft Him in 2023?

Michael Pittman let a lot of us down in 2022. He was a Top 40 pick entering the season, and I wrote glowingly about him here, paying the price in multiple leagues due to his disappointing campaign. But was this on him? Let’s dig in.

The appeal of Pittman was that he showed elite skills, and put up very good production with a revolving door of washed QBs throwing him the ball. The Colts brought in Matt Ryan last offseason, and while he proved to be yet another old, washed QB, the perception was that he had enough in the tank to stabilize an offense that had some really great pieces in place. Instead, Ryan was the No. 30 QB in football per PFF, and Pittman endured 12 games of him. Two other QBs started games for the Colts this year, and they made Ryan look like Joe Montana. Ryan’s PFF grade was 63.8; Sam Ehlinger checked in at 57.3, and Nick Foles earned a 34.0 grade. This disastrous trio unsurprisingly spearheaded the worst passing offense in the NFL last year according to Football Outsiders’ Pass DVOA metric, in which Indianapolis checked in at -32.4%. For context, the Texans were the second-worst pass offense, and they were at -21.3%.

The Colts’ offensive line contributed to this dumpster fire. PFF graded the unit as a bottom 10 pass blocking line, and they surrendered 60 sacks, the second-most in the league. Lastly, and this is tied to the previous factors, but Pittman was the only receiver on the team that was graded inside PFF’s Top 90. So he dealt with horrendous QB play, a line that couldn’t protect the mediocre to awful QBs, and receivers that did not draw any attention away from him.

But how was Pittman himself? Well…not great, but I am not entirely sure that the negative aspects of his 2022 performance can be divorced from these mitigating factors. Pittman was the clear-cut WR1 for this team, and he set a career-high for receptions, hauling in 99 passes, an increase of 11 from 2021. But despite that, he only managed 925 yards, down from 1,082 the previous year. Pittman saw his yards per reception dive from 12.3 to 9.3, his yards per target drop from 8.4 to 6.6, and his average depth of target (ADOT) plummet from 9.8 to 6.9. Simply put, Pittman’s season was completely bereft of big plays, as his longest receptions of the year wasn’t even 30 yards. Pittman’s TD total dropped from six to four, but that wasn’t a product of him being replaced as the primary red zone option; those four receiving touchdowns led the team! Rookie Alec Pierce did seem to soak up the deep targets on this team, but they weren’t worth much as he only produced 593 yards and two touchdowns in 16 games played.

Pittman appeared to be very much the same player as he was in 2021, but the way he was used shifted dramatically. Pittman was catching passes much closer to the line of scrimmage, leading to a higher PPR value, but making far less impactful plays. This might be because of an offense that just wasn’t run well, or maybe out of necessity because the Colts’ line couldn’t hold up in front of a statuesque veteran in Ryan. The Colts’ are hoping they addressed this putrid offense for next season by hiring Shane Steichen, the Eagles’ offensive coordinator, away from Philadelphia, but the hole at QB remains gaping. At this point, it is impossible to value Pittman because we do not know how the Colts plan to address the QB position. Sam Ehlinger and Nick Foles are not starting options, and neither is Ryan, who was benched in season. The Colts have the fourth pick, so it is very unlikely they’ll be able to draft either Alabama’s Bryce Young or Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud, meaning they are most likely competing for one of the veterans on the market – AGAIN, ugh – which include Derek Carr, Jimmy Garoppolo, Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold, and Jacoby Brissett. None of those options are particularly titillating, so perhaps this 2022 campaign is closer to what we should expect as opposed to the massive breakout we’d hoped for. However, we must wait and see.