The Steelers have signed wide receiver Donte Moncrief, a free agent who played in all 16 games for Jacksonville last year.Moncrief joined the Steelers on a two-year contract, the team announced Thursday. Financial terms were not disclosed.Moncrief gives the Steelers some depth at receiver after they traded Antonio Brown to Oakland.Who won: The Steelers or Antonio Brown? Tap the video player above to watch the report. "We are excited to sign Donte Moncrief to a two-year deal with the Pittsburgh Steelers,” general manager Kevin Colbert said. "We feel he is a great addition to our wide receiver group and we look forward to his contributions to our offense in 2019. "Moncrief had receptions for 668 yards and three touchdowns with the Jaguars in 2018. He started 14 of Jacksonville's 16 games.In his five-year NFL career, Moncrief has caught 200 passes for 2,543 yards and 21 touchdowns. He played one season with Jacksonville after four years with the Indianapolis Colts, who drafted him in the third round in 2014.Pittsburgh's receiving corps now includes JuJu Smith-Schuster, James Washington, Ryan Switzer, Eli Rogers, Diontae Spencer, Ka'Raun White and Moncrief. Brown is gone, and Justin Hunter and Darrius Heyward-Bey are unsigned free agents.Will Antonio Brown be able to coexist with Raiders coach Jon Gruden? Tap the video player below to watch the report. The Steelers have signed wide receiver Donte Moncrief, a free agent who played in all 16 games for Jacksonville last year. Moncrief joined the Steelers on a two-year contract, the team announced Thursday. Financial terms were not disclosed. Advertisement Moncrief gives the Steelers some depth at receiver after they traded Antonio Brown to Oakland. Who won: The Steelers or Antonio Brown? Tap the video player above to watch the report. "We are excited to sign Donte Moncrief to a two-year deal with the Pittsburgh Steelers,” general manager Kevin Colbert said. "We feel he is a great addition to our wide receiver group and we look forward to his contributions to our offense in 2019." Moncrief had receptions for 668 yards and three touchdowns with the Jaguars in 2018. He started 14 of Jacksonville's 16 games. In his five-year NFL career, Moncrief has caught 200 passes for 2,543 yards and 21 touchdowns. He played one season with Jacksonville after four years with the Indianapolis Colts, who drafted him in the third round in 2014. Pittsburgh's receiving corps now includes JuJu Smith-Schuster, James Washington, Ryan Switzer, Eli Rogers, Diontae Spencer, Ka'Raun White and Moncrief. Brown is gone, and Justin Hunter and Darrius Heyward-Bey are unsigned free agents. Will Antonio Brown be able to coexist with Raiders coach Jon Gruden? Tap the video player below to watch the report.<doc-sep>Late Wednesday night, NFL reporter Ian Rapoport tweeted out the Pittsburgh Steelers will be signing free-agent wide receiver Donte Moncrief to a two-year contract. What will this addition mean for the wide receiver depth chart? Let’s throw out a few theories. No impact on the draft The addition of Moncrief is not going to change the Steelers draft plans in terms of a wide receiver. We obviously aren’t privy to the Steelers’ big board but if Pittsburgh was planning to spend a top pick in an attempt to replace Antonio Brown, this signing will not change anything.<doc-sep>In yet another move in this very busy NFL free agency, WR Donte Moncrief has agreed to a two-year deal with the Pittsburgh Steelers. This will be Moncrief’s third team in three years, and he joins a team in need of playmakers on offense having recently lost a couple of big pieces. How will Moncrief fare with the Steelers? What will his arrival mean for his new teammates? Let’s check it out. Practice fast mock drafts with our free Mock Draft Simulator >> Who is This Guy? Moncrief is a five-year vet who was drafted by the Colts in the third round of the 2014 draft. He was a highly-touted prospect out of Ole Miss in large part due to his exceptional physical tools. Moncrief is 6’2/220 lbs. with major hops and 4.40 40-yard dash speed. He never materialized into the starting WR the Colts envisioned him to be, and he wasn’t re-signed when his contract expired after four years with the team. Moncrief missed a total of 11 games while in Indianapolis due to injuries. Moncrief joined the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2018 on a one-year “prove it” deal, and the team decided to move on from him after just one season. The Numbers Moncrief compiled 1,875 receiving yards and 18 TDs on 152 receptions in his four seasons with the Colts, never eclipsing 733 receiving yards or seven TDs in a single season. He played in all 16 games in his first two seasons in Indianapolis, starting 10 games his second year in 2015 and notching career highs in receptions (64) and receiving yards (733). That same season, he finished WR35 — his best fantasy finish as a pro. Moncrief’s career high in TDs came the following season in 2016 where he caught seven TDs in just nine games played. Moncrief had a pedestrian 2017 (26-391-2) and bounced back in 2018 with a 48-668-3 line. While Moncrief’s overall production has been average at best, there’s room for optimism. He was on pace for double-digit TDs in 2016 had he not missed seven games with a shoulder injury. His yards per reception (Y/R) totals have been very solid over the last two seasons, good for 14.3 on 74 combined receptions in that span. Moncrief managed three-year highs in receptions and receiving yards in his first season in Jacksonville, starting a career-high 14 games. That’s pretty impressive considering he was catching passes from Blake Bortles and Cody Kessler. The Need In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last week, you already know that the Steelers just parted ways with arguably the best receiver in team history, Antonio Brown. Brown, the Steelers’ second-leading receiver in many club records, signed with the Raiders earlier this week and leaves 168 targets vacated in Pittsburgh. What kind of target volume can Moncrief realistically expect? Let’s assume that new number-one wideout JuJu Smith-Schuster will command a 25 percent target share next season. Let’s also assume that Ben Roethlisberger throws 526 passes, his most recent 10-year average. That means that JuJu will see 131 targets, leaving 395 to be divied out among the rest of the Steelers’ pass-catchers. That bodes well for Moncrief to see at least 100 targets — something he’s only done once in his career. Those numbers could be even higher if the Pittsburgh offense looks anything like it did last season when Big Ben threw a league-leading and career-high 675 passes. Moncrief will get some work. The Steelers’ Receiving Corps The Steelers’ receiving corps now features third-year stud JuJu Smith-Schuster, James Washington, and Eli Rogers. Smith-Schuster will be the unquestioned number-one, but Moncrief should start opposite him all year, unless the team addresses the position in the draft or free agency. He’s not a lock to win the starting gig, but he should have no problem beating out Rogers and Washington in training camp. Washington will still get some looks, but his fantasy value is way down following the Moncrief signing. Rogers’ fantasy value is almost non-existent, as he’ll be forced down the depth chart. The signing does little to impact JuJu Smith-Schuster’s value, though it can only help him to have other playmakers divert defensive attention off of him. Ben Roethlisberger will get a small bump in value here too by gaining another weapon. The Fit – Size and Speed Moncrief will actually be a great fit in Pittsburgh. Because of his size, he’ll be the biggest wideout on the team. That should translate to plenty of red-zone opportunities on jump balls — an element the Steelers could certainly use. Moncrief can also be used as a deep threat because of his speed, and it’s likely he’s heavily involved in the Steelers’ offensive game plan next season. The Steelers and free agent WR Golden Tate are rumored to have mutual interest, so keep an eye on that — Moncrief’s value would take a big hit in the event of a Tate signing. And the team could also target a WR in the NFL Draft. But if the Steelers’ receiving corps goes into 2019 with this iteration, I like Moncrief as a top-40 option with high-end WR3 upside. I’m expecting him to post new career highs across the board en route to a breakout campaign. 2019 Prediction: 125 targets, 77 receptions, 900 receiving yards, 8 receiving TDs Subscribe: iTunes | Google Play | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | TuneIn | RSS Zachary Hanshew is a correspondent at FantasyPros. For more from Zachary, check out his archive and follow him @zakthemonster.<doc-sep>The Telegraph Two of the surprise packages of this clay-court season have been British – initially Dan Evans, who made a deep run in Monte Carlo, and more lately Cameron Norrie, who played his second final in three weeks on Sunday. Unfortunately, Norrie wasn’t able to land a maiden ATP title in Lyon. But then he was up against Stefanos Tsitsipas, who has been the dominant force of 2021 outside the slams, and now stands at No 1 in the table of most rankings points gained since January 1. Nevertheless, it had been a hugely creditable effort for Norrie to go this far, especially when you consider that he took out top seed Dominic Thiem on Thursday, and then trounced big-hitting Russian Karen Khachanov in Saturday’s semi-final, losing only two games in the process. Norrie has come to clay late in his career, but it feels like this is developing into his favourite surface. He has one of the heaviest left-handed forehands in the game, loaded with top-spin, and uses it like a miniature version of Rafael Nadal. The result has been a tally of 14 wins and only four losses since he began his European clay-court swing in Barcelona. So while the French Open, which starts next Sunday, has traditionally been a graveyard of British hopes, there are reasons to hope that this year’s event could deliver some more positive results. Norrie’s previous final in Estoril had been a nervewracking affair which he eventually lost on a deciding-set tie-break to the more experienced Spaniard Albert Ramos-Vinolas. Sunday was more straightforward for Tsitsipas, who needed only 69 minutes to hammer home a 6-3, 6-3 victory. It was Tsitsipas’ second title of the clay-court sequence, after he won Monte Carlo in mid-April, taking out Evans in the semi-final along the way. He has become a serious contender to upset the establishment – specifically Nadal and Novak Djokovic – at Roland Garros over the next few weeks. “I felt in good shape from the beginning of the tournament,” said Tsitsipas afterwards. “I am proud of today’s match, I knew it would be a difficult one against Cameron, who has been showing great tennis this week. He has been winning against good players and showing what the left hand can do on clay. “It was not an easy match today. I had to handle the nerves and I am proud of my performance and the way I stayed focused towards my goal.” On this year’s results, meanwhile, both Evans and Norrie stand among the world’s 20 most successful men. Evans is at No 16 and Norrie No 14. The next challenge for them both is to convert that ATP Tour form into a deep run at a major.<doc-sep>
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA - NOVEMBER 11: Donte Moncrief #10 of the Jacksonville Jaguars catches a pass in the game against the Indianapolis Colts at Lucas Oil Stadium on November 11, 2018 in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images) While he doesn’t fill the void left by the departure of Antonio Brown, wide receiver Donte Moncrief could be a solid addition for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Replacing a talent that amassed an NFL-record six consecutive seasons with 100 or more catches doesn’t figure to be easy. And while it’s obvious that the Pittsburgh Steelers have a big hole to fill with the trade of wide receiver Antonio Brown to the Oakland Raiders, the franchise is once again going about its business by adding a veteran player that fits their needs in many ways. A former third-round draft choice of the Indianapolis Colts in 2014, Donte Moncrief spent four seasons catching his share of passes from quarterback Andrew Luck. His career totals with the Colts read as 152 receptions for 1,875 yards (12.3 average) and 18 scores in 53 regular-season outings with the club. This past season, the former Ole Miss standout was with the Jacksonville Jaguars. He finished third on the team with 48 catches but was second with 668 receiving yards, to go along with three scores. Moncrief joins a wide receiving corps that still includes Juju Smith-Schuster, Ryan Switzer, Eli Rogers and 2018 second-round pick James Washington. Contract Details While financial terms were not available at the moment, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports that the five-year pro has agreed to a two-year deal with the Steelers. National Reaction Donte Moncrief — who's joining Steelers on a two-year deal, per @AdamSchefter — won't adequately replace Antonio Brown (not many can) but gets chance to re-establish himself after struggles in Jacksonville. Moncrief has size, speed and 3 TDs in five career games vs. PIT. — Jeremy Fowler (@JFowlerESPN) March 14, 2019 A classic Steelers' move. Moncrief gives them the ability to not force a WR in the draft. They can take one as they come in the draft. The only position now of glaring need is ILB. And a trade up might be required to handle that. But they have the draft capital. #Steelers #dkps — Dale Lolley (@dlolley_pgh) March 14, 2019 Donte Moncrief really couldn't have dreamed up a much better landing spot than the #Steelers. Love this flier for the team and player. My snap-reaction thoughts: pic.twitter.com/cmpebLuTTd — Nick Mensio (@NickMensio) March 14, 2019 Donte Moncrief is the classic Colbert signing. The "stop the leak" addition at position of need so you don't feel 100% obligated to draft one right away. That's how you reach. Obviously though, team could – and likely will – draft a WR pretty high. This offers some flexibility. — Alex Kozora (@Alex_Kozora) March 14, 2019 DONTE MONCRIEF WR, Pittsburgh Steelers B As usual, general manager Kevin Colbert and the organization doesn’t have a lot of cap room at their disposal. But Moncrief could prove to be a sneaky-good addition to a Pittsburgh offense that should strive for a little more balance in 2019. The five-year pro has reached the end zone 21 times amongst his 200 career regular-season receptions. While he doesn’t figure to be a high-volume pass-catcher, he gives quarterback Ben Roethlisberger a proven and reliable option. It will be interesting to see if the team is finished when it comes to adding veterans receivers to their roster. The likes of Golden Tate, Randall Cobb and Michael Crabtree are all still available but may not come cheap. This could prove to be a very unspectacular but effective addition for Mike Tomlin’s team. The Steelers have a lot to do when it comes to replacing a seven-time Pro Bowler like Antonio Brown. Moncrief is a step in the right direction and keep in mind the club has 10 selections in this year’s draft.