Diontae Johnson Injury Update Limits Fantasy Outlook for Week 1

Diontae Johnson was a popular breakout fantasy football pick this offseason, but fantasy football managers may need to wait at least a week before counting on that breakout.

He missed the Pittsburgh Steelers' Thursday practice with a foot injury, clouding his fantasy football outlook for Week 1's Monday Night Football matchup with the New York Giants.

Johnson's fantasy outlook for Week 1 was already a little tenuous. To achieve the breakout being predicted, he does still need to beat out James Washington and Chase Claypool as the team's No. 2 WR across from JuJu Smith-Schuster. He'll also still be competing for looks with Eric Ebron, who reportedly had a strong training camp.

That means that even with a healthy Johnson, it would probably be wise to take a wait-and-see approach, despite his solid Week 1 matchup with the New York Giants (No. 30 in Football Outsiders' pass defense DVOA metric in 2019).

Now nursing an injury, unless we get word that Johnson is expected to be full-go despite the missed practice, he's especially risky this week. This doesn't mean his breakout is cancelled and that you should drop him, but it does mean that it's tough to justify starting him.

This is especially true because we may not have word on his status by the time Sunday's 1 p.m. games kick off.

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Jason Schandl is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Jason Schandl also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username Jaymun. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in his articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.