https://www.washingtonpost.com/spor...h-talented-wide-receivers-theres-reason-that/
THIS NFL DRAFT IS LOADED WITH TALENTED WIDE RECEIVERS. THERE'S A REASON FOR THAT
By Adam Kilgore
April 13, 2020 at 9:00 a.m. EDT
Aside from the sudden ubiquity of Zoom calls and the occasional tone-deaf grumbles of personnel executives over work-from-home orders due to the coronavirus pandemic, the abundance of promising wide receivers has the chance to define the 2020 NFL draft.
Baltimore Ravens General Manager Eric DeCosta identified 25 wide receivers the team would be happy to draft. NFL Network analyst Daniel Jeremiah graded 27 worthy of being taken in the first three rounds. "It's definitely going to be a legendary class," Colorado wideout Laviska Shenault Jr. said.
The depth, variety and projected excellence of this year's wide receiver prospects, though, are not a blip or a coincidence. They're a continuation of what trends in the sport have created.
"It's a great group," Seattle Seahawks General Manager John Schneider said at this year's NFL scouting combine, "but it seems like the last several years it has been like that."
Schneider is right: NFL teams drafted 13 wide receivers in the first three rounds last year, and while many regretted their choices, a gaggle of wideouts made an immediate impact. A.J. Brown, Deebo Samuel, Terry McLaurin, DK Metcalf and Darius Slayton (a fifth-rounder) became crucial parts of their teams' offenses. Nine rookie wide receivers gained at least 500 receiving yards.
This year's wide receiver class will be at the top of the curve. Jerry Jeudy has the footwork of a veteran all-pro, Henry Ruggs III will instantly be one of the fastest men in the NFL, and CeeDee Lamb could catch an ice cube covered in olive oil. That's just the start. Shenault can be used like a running back, Jalen Reagor can take the top off the defense, and Justin Jefferson can line up anywhere.
"You can kind of get whatever flavor you like," 49ers General Manager John Lynch said at the combine. "If you like smaller, quicker guys, those guys are there. If you like the big guys that can move, those guys are there. If you like speed, that's there. If you like separators — so I think the whole league's kind of smiling about that."
But the class is not necessarily an outlier. Owing to enhancements in development, offensive evolution and even rule changes, wide receivers are reaching the NFL ready to excel in unprecedented numbers. There has never been a better time to be a wide receiver — or, if you're an NFL team, to need one.
The preponderance of wide receivers starts at football's lowest levels. Spread offenses featuring three or four wideouts have predominated long enough that players now coming out of college were playing in them in Pop Warner. The available pool of wide receivers started larger than ever before. Plenty of kids who would have played running back have been lining up out wide since they first put on pads.
Those same kids came of age with seven-on-seven passing leagues and sophisticated training facilities and camps cemented into the youth football landscape. Advances in training help all positions, of course, but wide receivers are uniquely situated to benefit. Offensive linemen can't participate in seven-on-seven leagues. Defensive players can't practice tackling all offseason. Wideouts can hone footwork and run routes as much as they want, and their offseason practice more closely mimics what they do in games than any other position.
"The football players are getting better because of all the extra work you can do," said former NFL wide receiver Miles Austin, now an assistant with the 49ers. "It's getting specialized in a way, especially the receiver position."
Drafted in 2003, Justin Gage played wide receiver for eight seasons for the Chicago Bears and Tennessee Titans. He now trains receivers at Elite Football Academy in suburban St. Louis. "In my generation coming up, we didn't really have training," Gage said. "It was just, 'Get outside and play.' " He now helps kids learn how to control their bodies using intricate footwork drills.
"Once you figured your body out — how do I decelerate and accelerate, turn left and turn right? — once you start mastering those techniques, then the route running becomes easier to teach," Gage said.
Rule changes have expanded the number of receivers who can benefit from better development. It was once a requirement for wide receivers to conquer the physical danger of running patterns across the middle of the field, where linebackers and safeties could drill them — in the head or elsewhere — with impunity. The NFL — and every other level of football — has eliminated those hits.
If the number of wide receivers with the athletic capability to play in the NFL has remained static, the pool of potential NFL wide receivers has expanded. All the wide receivers who would have suffered career-altering injuries or who wouldn't have the nerve to play the position can now become top prospects.
Certainly, wide receivers still absorb vicious hits. "There's still fear," Austin said. But the current crop of draftees has played their entire career under the present rules, meaning they've never played with the risk wide receivers from previous generations confronted.
"Absolutely," Gage said. "There's a bigger list of guys that couldn't do it than could do it. From the early 2000s, you'll get that same answer from a lot of those guys. … You end up playing against guys like Sean Taylor; you knew every time you stepped on the field running across the middle, you knew there was a chance he could decapitate you. There's no fear there now going across the middle."
As receiver-heavy college offenses have taken over the NFL, defenses have responded by putting more speed on the field. Facing smaller, quicker defensive backs, receivers who previously would have been considered undersized can now play major roles. The first receiver drafted last year was Marquise Brown, listed at 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds, whose speed helped transform Baltimore's offense.
NFL teams are already adjusting to the surplus of qualified receivers. Many receiver-needy teams, such as the Philadelphia Eagles and Las Vegas Raiders, sat out free agency and the trade market knowing they could bolster their wide receiving corps in the draft. A similar dynamic could play out in the draft, with teams addressing other positions with their top picks, knowing highly regarded wideouts will still be available in later rounds.
"There will be through round four some top, top guys that are still left," Arizona Cardinals Coach Kliff Kingsbury said at the combine.
The Los Angeles Rams face a salary cap crunch, and they used the draft's wide receiver depth as a solution. Last week, they traded Brandin Cooks (and a 2022 fourth-round selection) to the Houston Texans for a second-round pick. They could use that choice to add a receiver who can replace Cooks at a fraction of the price.
Even with all the receiving options in the draft, choosing one still presents risk. Raiders General Manager Mike Mayock, a former NFL Network draft expert, said at the scouting combine that he had graded between 20 and 25 wideouts good enough to be picked in the first three rounds. But he tempered his enthusiasm by saying his research suggests first-round receivers bust at a rate similar to quarterbacks, a notoriously challenging position to draft.
Even as college offenses have seeped into the NFL, college defenses still employ far less man-to-man coverage than NFL schemes, especially press-man coverage in which a defensive back crowds a receiver and challenges him immediately at the snap. One of the most important skills for an NFL receiver is battling a cornerback at the line of scrimmage, and evaluators can only project who might be any good at it.
"You don't get to see a lot of one-on-ones, how they beat man coverage," 49ers Coach Kyle Shanahan said. "It's always a guess."
Picking the right receiver, then, is no guarantee. But there are plenty of options to choose from, and that is not likely to change any time soon.
By Adam Kilgore
April 13, 2020 at 9:00 a.m. EDT
Aside from the sudden ubiquity of Zoom calls and the occasional tone-deaf grumbles of personnel executives over work-from-home orders due to the coronavirus pandemic, the abundance of promising wide receivers has the chance to define the 2020 NFL draft.
Baltimore Ravens General Manager Eric DeCosta identified 25 wide receivers the team would be happy to draft. NFL Network analyst Daniel Jeremiah graded 27 worthy of being taken in the first three rounds. "It's definitely going to be a legendary class," Colorado wideout Laviska Shenault Jr. said.
The depth, variety and projected excellence of this year's wide receiver prospects, though, are not a blip or a coincidence. They're a continuation of what trends in the sport have created.
"It's a great group," Seattle Seahawks General Manager John Schneider said at this year's NFL scouting combine, "but it seems like the last several years it has been like that."
Schneider is right: NFL teams drafted 13 wide receivers in the first three rounds last year, and while many regretted their choices, a gaggle of wideouts made an immediate impact. A.J. Brown, Deebo Samuel, Terry McLaurin, DK Metcalf and Darius Slayton (a fifth-rounder) became crucial parts of their teams' offenses. Nine rookie wide receivers gained at least 500 receiving yards.
This year's wide receiver class will be at the top of the curve. Jerry Jeudy has the footwork of a veteran all-pro, Henry Ruggs III will instantly be one of the fastest men in the NFL, and CeeDee Lamb could catch an ice cube covered in olive oil. That's just the start. Shenault can be used like a running back, Jalen Reagor can take the top off the defense, and Justin Jefferson can line up anywhere.
"You can kind of get whatever flavor you like," 49ers General Manager John Lynch said at the combine. "If you like smaller, quicker guys, those guys are there. If you like the big guys that can move, those guys are there. If you like speed, that's there. If you like separators — so I think the whole league's kind of smiling about that."
But the class is not necessarily an outlier. Owing to enhancements in development, offensive evolution and even rule changes, wide receivers are reaching the NFL ready to excel in unprecedented numbers. There has never been a better time to be a wide receiver — or, if you're an NFL team, to need one.
The preponderance of wide receivers starts at football's lowest levels. Spread offenses featuring three or four wideouts have predominated long enough that players now coming out of college were playing in them in Pop Warner. The available pool of wide receivers started larger than ever before. Plenty of kids who would have played running back have been lining up out wide since they first put on pads.
Those same kids came of age with seven-on-seven passing leagues and sophisticated training facilities and camps cemented into the youth football landscape. Advances in training help all positions, of course, but wide receivers are uniquely situated to benefit. Offensive linemen can't participate in seven-on-seven leagues. Defensive players can't practice tackling all offseason. Wideouts can hone footwork and run routes as much as they want, and their offseason practice more closely mimics what they do in games than any other position.
"The football players are getting better because of all the extra work you can do," said former NFL wide receiver Miles Austin, now an assistant with the 49ers. "It's getting specialized in a way, especially the receiver position."
Drafted in 2003, Justin Gage played wide receiver for eight seasons for the Chicago Bears and Tennessee Titans. He now trains receivers at Elite Football Academy in suburban St. Louis. "In my generation coming up, we didn't really have training," Gage said. "It was just, 'Get outside and play.' " He now helps kids learn how to control their bodies using intricate footwork drills.
"Once you figured your body out — how do I decelerate and accelerate, turn left and turn right? — once you start mastering those techniques, then the route running becomes easier to teach," Gage said.
Rule changes have expanded the number of receivers who can benefit from better development. It was once a requirement for wide receivers to conquer the physical danger of running patterns across the middle of the field, where linebackers and safeties could drill them — in the head or elsewhere — with impunity. The NFL — and every other level of football — has eliminated those hits.
If the number of wide receivers with the athletic capability to play in the NFL has remained static, the pool of potential NFL wide receivers has expanded. All the wide receivers who would have suffered career-altering injuries or who wouldn't have the nerve to play the position can now become top prospects.
Certainly, wide receivers still absorb vicious hits. "There's still fear," Austin said. But the current crop of draftees has played their entire career under the present rules, meaning they've never played with the risk wide receivers from previous generations confronted.
"Absolutely," Gage said. "There's a bigger list of guys that couldn't do it than could do it. From the early 2000s, you'll get that same answer from a lot of those guys. … You end up playing against guys like Sean Taylor; you knew every time you stepped on the field running across the middle, you knew there was a chance he could decapitate you. There's no fear there now going across the middle."
As receiver-heavy college offenses have taken over the NFL, defenses have responded by putting more speed on the field. Facing smaller, quicker defensive backs, receivers who previously would have been considered undersized can now play major roles. The first receiver drafted last year was Marquise Brown, listed at 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds, whose speed helped transform Baltimore's offense.
NFL teams are already adjusting to the surplus of qualified receivers. Many receiver-needy teams, such as the Philadelphia Eagles and Las Vegas Raiders, sat out free agency and the trade market knowing they could bolster their wide receiving corps in the draft. A similar dynamic could play out in the draft, with teams addressing other positions with their top picks, knowing highly regarded wideouts will still be available in later rounds.
"There will be through round four some top, top guys that are still left," Arizona Cardinals Coach Kliff Kingsbury said at the combine.
The Los Angeles Rams face a salary cap crunch, and they used the draft's wide receiver depth as a solution. Last week, they traded Brandin Cooks (and a 2022 fourth-round selection) to the Houston Texans for a second-round pick. They could use that choice to add a receiver who can replace Cooks at a fraction of the price.
Even with all the receiving options in the draft, choosing one still presents risk. Raiders General Manager Mike Mayock, a former NFL Network draft expert, said at the scouting combine that he had graded between 20 and 25 wideouts good enough to be picked in the first three rounds. But he tempered his enthusiasm by saying his research suggests first-round receivers bust at a rate similar to quarterbacks, a notoriously challenging position to draft.
Even as college offenses have seeped into the NFL, college defenses still employ far less man-to-man coverage than NFL schemes, especially press-man coverage in which a defensive back crowds a receiver and challenges him immediately at the snap. One of the most important skills for an NFL receiver is battling a cornerback at the line of scrimmage, and evaluators can only project who might be any good at it.
"You don't get to see a lot of one-on-ones, how they beat man coverage," 49ers Coach Kyle Shanahan said. "It's always a guess."
Picking the right receiver, then, is no guarantee. But there are plenty of options to choose from, and that is not likely to change any time soon.
