The ideal way to build a WR room in 2026

0:00Robert Mays: It's smart to always have a few financial goals and a really smart one you can set earning cash back on what you buy every day. And with Discover, you can get this. Discover automatically matches all the cash back you've earned at the end of your first year. Seriously, all of it. And we trust you to make smart decisions. After all, you listen to this show. See terms at discover.com slash credit card. Welcome to The Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. Training camp on the horizon. Going to dig into a lot of preview type conversations, projecting what the 2026 season is going to look like. But a couple more deeper offseason shows before we get to those sorts of discussions.

0:41Robert Mays: And today's is a big picture look at the way we think about receiving groups in the NFL. I think there's a traditional way of thinking about and conceiving of how these players are supposed to fit together. We've heard it a million times, if you've followed the league for a while, where you want a basketball team, right? Like you want a bunch of guys with different body types, different skill sets, different areas where they can specialize within the offense. That has been the conventional wisdom really since I've started doing this. The amount of times I've heard that term talking to coaches and personnel people just over and over and over again.

1:15Robert Mays: But we know that the league has changed a lot in the last decade or so. That the way that offenses are structured, the way that offenses are constructed, the types of players that have become valuable and central to what the best offense in the NFL look like, that has started to change. So does that mean what receiving rooms look like should also change? what does the correct receiver group that idealized one look like if you were building it from scratch in 2026? That's what we did today with my buddy Matt Harmon from Reception Perception and Yahoo Fantasy. Matt does better work and more intensive work on the position than anybody else.

1:53Robert Mays: I couldn't think of another person I would rather have this conversation with. He thinks about this stuff all the time, and that is very clear when we dig into this discussion. So this is me and Matt Harmon on what an idealized receiver group looks like in 2026. How are you putting that group together and why? Let's get to that conversation right now.

2:22Robert Mays: Our guest today is in some ways a victim of his own success and talent because every time I want to have a conversation about the broader landscape of the wide receiver position in the NFL, I only want to have it with one man, and I feel like I'm putting him in too small of a box by doing that, but I also don't know what else I would do. How do you feel about this, Matt Harmon? How do you feel about having developed yourself into the wide receiver man? I'm perfectly fine with that. Okay, good. Limited application skill set. That's my archetype of player. You know, I live in this small box anyways, in terms of the podcasting box that you and I are looking at right now.

3:02So it just makes sense from a content perspective. Yeah, keep me in that box as much as possible.

3:07Robert Mays: Just to let people behind the curtain a little bit, essentially what happens in the offseason is either right before the draft happens or right after the draft happens, I'll sit down for an indeterminate amount of time and think about what shows I want to do from May 1st until we really start training camp. Really in the depths of the offseason. And a lot of the shows are ones I like doing. You're totally removed from any news. You kind of explore things that you're curious about. And when I came up with that list heading into this summer, this is one of the ones I had circled. This is one of the ones with a bullet where I was like, I know the subject matter I want to talk about.

3:41Robert Mays: I know the person I want to have on to talk about this, and I cannot wait to dig into it. And one of the reasons is that I always love thinking about and challenging either broader conventional wisdom that we have about the sport or things that I just say out of hand without maybe necessarily examining it that often. And for so long, I'm sure you've said this. I know I've said this a bazillion times. The idea was when you're putting together a group of receivers, you want a basketball team, right? You want guys that have different body types, different skill sets, different applications, all of that.

4:12Robert Mays: But the game has changed so much since I think that became part of our parlance about the sport that I wanted to just take a step back in 2026 and say, is that right? Like, should we still be thinking about that broader and historical way of thinking of putting together your group of receivers in an NFL offense? So that's what we're going to do today. What should your group of pass catchers look like if you were building it in a vacuum in 2026? Yeah. And obviously, I think about this stuff all the time, both from just like an individual team perspective, individual player perspective, and just where the league is at right now.

4:52I definitely said this a lot leading into last offseason, where the way that teams have now condensed things so much, whether it is those condensed formations, cut splits, everything like that. But it's almost given me a little bit of like an existential crisis with how I chart and collect like pre-snap data for players because it's just so dramatically different. I was looking at this today reading headlines about, you know, Teddero McMillan might play more out of the slot, you know, this year than he did last year. I'm like, well, for one, be kind of hard to kind of hard for him to play any less out of the slot.

5:29117, 117 receivers ran 200 or more routes last year. He was 107th, I think, in terms of slot percentage. So he's already down there towards the bottom.

5:37Robert Mays: His post-snap production on those plays has to be crazy, though. Yeah, it's awesome. I mean, there's no question that he can do it. And this is part of where we'll get into this whole discussion is, like, what you need around the one player that you want to feature in all these multiple alignments or anything. But the, like, and you know this is what happens. When you go looking for one thing, you end up finding another. I knew this inherently because, you know, I had done a ton of work on George Pickens and everything like that, but he took 7.6 % of his snaps from the slot last year, which is just insanely, insanely low.

6:11It's the lowest of the last three years for any receiver that's run 200 or more routes. But not only that, he was so productive on those plays. He averaged 84 yards per game. No other receiver under 17 has even come close to that, really. So I say all that to say that like when you watch a player doing that, which is just outside on the line of scrimmage boundary stuff, and then you compare it to how most other top receivers are operating right now, it is just so dramatically different. So that's where kind of like my, again, I think beyond just what you're charting and the data points, it's being able to put the context behind it and explain more of it.

6:50Because I don't think you'll ever fully capture the picture of this stuff with just individual charting data. that I think you have to really dive into it more from a nuanced standpoint.

6:56Robert Mays: Yeah, I 100 % agree. And I was thinking about this when I was doing some research about, we talked about Jack Besh on the Scheme Change All-Stars show, just in terms of like guys that are going to be. Let's go. Now you're talking my music here, Jack Besh. It was, I made the joke, and I know you've done this too this offseason, I made the joke at the beginning of the conversation, like I already feel bad about comparing him to Cooper Cup, but that's exactly what we should be doing in terms of like how he should be used within the offense. But one of the things I found myself wishing we had because of how nuanced and how granular some of these considerations are now is like I wish on NextGen and somebody should say this, like, can I figure out can you give me a stat about a player's distance from the ball?

7:38Robert Mays: Like on his snaps and like how far he is away from the formation, because now all we have is wide tight slot. And it's like that only goes so far in actually explaining what we're trying to do here. But I think the broader point here is that there are so many different layers of how we're thinking about the position and how guys are deployed and how we're bucketing positions as we designate them, X, Z, whatever, that we just weren't really thinking about 10 years ago when you and I started doing this. Exactly. I mean, a guy could be the outside on-ball receiver like the nominal X, but the teams have just become so good at blurring the line pre - and post-snap.

8:21And obviously motion is a big part of this. To go back to the Tedrow-McMillan example, nobody is looking at Jimmy Horn Jr. and thinking he's an important part of the Panthers' offense from a stats perspective. But a lot of those plays where even McMillan wasn't the slot player at the beginning of like when the ball is snapped he ends up becoming that guy because horn cuts across behind him and just creates a ton of leverage for him to run these big in breaking routes his favorite route to run i think one of his best routes are those bigger dig routes and things of things of that nature so yeah to me like that's just another way that okay what jimmy horn jr was he is he like the slot receivers it's just all that stuff gets really blurred and i think that's really been that even beyond just like how far away they are from the ball and obviously you have to be pretty condensed to be able to pull off something like that teams are just better at this it's it's opened up like the body types for players that can do different things so when we get into kind of the archetype discussion it that's what makes it really tricky at this point is that i think with the way you know schemes and everything are right now we're just in a very much more open world than we were um both like literally and figuratively in a much more open world right now than we probably were certainly 10 years ago.

9:38I would even say five years ago.

9:39Robert Mays: And when we get into this, one of the things I wanted to bring up is that when you and I had our last conversation on this show about the just broader landscape of the position, we were talking about the shifting nature of what a number one receiver looks like, where you have guys like Pukunakua, Amon Ross St. Brown, JSN, that physically and in terms of deployment just don't look like what superstar receivers used to look like in the NFL, but now they undeniably are those sorts of players. And so that leads me kind of into my first question here. As you're putting together a receiving core now from scratch and the way you'd want to build it, where would you start and how different is that now compared to when that would probably start with your Andre Johnson ex receivers?

10:23Yeah, right. Before it's like, okay, how can we find an alien ex receiver? and we go from there and obviously that's it was easier said than done then and it still remains that way now i think we kind of have to almost step one layer backwards and that is are we do we have like someone that we think we can run the whole passing game out of like a puka nakua or even an aman rossain brown i think jackson's fifth and jayba kind of has is almost like separate even though that was like a good talking point at the time and i still think like skill set wise he is a little bit something different than those two.

10:55And even Puka and St. Brown, there's some little subtle differences, but I think they're more like of the same archetype and same bucket. But anyways, like, do we have someone like that, that we want to run the whole passing game through? Or are we kind of trying to, you know, put this together in the collective? Are we trying to like aggregate a number one receiver? Because I would say that if you're trying to aggregate the number one receiver, you don't have like a true, true, true, either tier one, or I would say even tier two number one wide out you almost kind of do get back into the old way of doing things where you can put together that basketball room i would go back to the colts from last season they're the best example of this where they truly had three kind of perfect cookie cutter complimentary cookie cutter three receiver set where it's like alec pierce as the x receiver and not even like a sacrificial x receiver he was he was the guy that uh and we'll get into this at some point i kind of think the sacrificial x receiver bit has jumped the shark but we'll come we'll come back to that i'm sure at a different point but not even like a sacrificial play there's a true x receiver who beats press main coverage and wins along the vertical plane and also does some in breakers too so he was the x pitman is that what i like like a bigger body z receiver who you can bring in close to the ball can be like a contributor in the blocking game but can also go into the slot it's right now it's like almost mandatory i think if we're talking about the z receiver if you're not going to have that like dynamic separator i almost really really do and i think pitman's a solid separator and a better technician than he gets credit for but if you're not going to have that guy like i do want them to be a big body who can come in and be condensed and help us out in the run game and all that kind of stuff and then when you get into the slot archetype i still really do like if you if you aren't if you don't have the power player if you don't have the bigger slot body i still love a guy like josh downs who can you know smoke man coverage in critical down and distance situations.

12:46So yeah, to me, I think they kind of had it perfect if we're doing the wide receiver room by the warmth of collectivism. Like it's that they did the they did it right in the 2025 Colts offense. And obviously, that's going to look different this year. I would even argue that they have a perfect fourth one, because when you add what Tyler

13:02Robert Mays: Warren does to the rest of that group, it's actually the exact skill set you would want that none of those guys have because none of those guys are creators with the ball in their hands and that's exactly the role that he ended up playing within that offense it's like slide routes dump off screens like a guy who can create is the one thing they didn't have among that group and now they do have a guy that can create when you give him those opportunities right because it does kind of when you have the slot receiver that's in the josh downs bucket and i think he is more i think he's more of a vertical slot than he probably gets credit for and even pitman is more the reliable big bodied rugged z receiver none of those guys are all right I can spit the ball out to this player you know at seven yards and he can get me 10 or you know let's really hope he can get me like 14 15 since they didn't have that you kind of need that at the tight end position and that's why he became such a big part of what they did offensively so yeah the tight end is like a whole nother kind of layer to this conversation too both from like a formation and also a personnel standpoint that obviously is like a little bit outside of my wheelhouse and specialty but at the same time I do think it's a big part of when we're putting this room together hypothetically what it all looks like.

14:08Robert Mays: So let's take this in two different chunks then because I think that is a really good distinction for you to make there. When you don't have that true number one guy, it does change the way that you have to build it. So let's just stick with if let's let's go down the path of if you're trying to find that guy, you can build it all through. This kind of goes back to the conversation we had a little bit last year. But even if that archetype has changed a little bit and the types of players you can build it all through have changed we still want to live in a world where jamar chase or justin jefferson are the center pieces of our passing game do we not yes and then at that point like yeah you can you can pull together the wide receiver one in the aggregate and it also obviously depends on your core so much of this could be like it depends we could do a whole 60 minutes on the pod with it depends being the right answer to you know 25 of the 30 questions but at the same time like i think that Yes, while you can pull together the wide receiver one in the aggregate, I still think having that player is really is paramount to success in a lot of different ways.

15:09And I think to me, if we're going to have the Jamar Chase, if we're going to have the Justin Jefferson, and I think both of these guys have perfectly lived in this world, especially Chase much more than early in his career. To me, we're never using that guy outside and on the ball on 80 percent of his snaps in any in any given season. Like he has to become a movement player, which then dictates what are the other body types that you have in the room? Like to me, I'm this is fresh in my mind because I'm about to finish Nico Collins's 2025 season. I would argue that the Texans have the right body type for all right, right body types for all this stuff.

15:49And we'll see what this looks like. Like they could be Collins is better than Pierce. But like, I think that they could have a Colts-ish type room this year where they have a perfect X. They have a big bodied Z receiver in Jaden Higgins, who I kind of liked a lot of what he did from that position. Not when he was playing X all that much, but, and then Jalen Null, I really, really liked Jalen Null as a kind of a vertical slot option there, but they pretty much just leave Nico Collins at X. And that's kind of it. And to me, I think that's like the only problem I had really with like his usage last year because he is so good and they use him a lot on these big breaking routes and quick slants.

16:26And he's so good against press man coverage. But to me, I think we need to take the number one receiver and move them across the formation. So they almost have to have an ability to play from multiple alignments. I think Nico can do it. He just hasn't really been asked to do it yet. And in that way, like their ability to win against zone coverage in the underneath area is pretty paramount there, too. Yeah, I still think we want to have the number one receiver. It's just it's then on the staff. It's on the other players to step up to be able to do that. And obviously, if you go back to the Jamar Chase example, because they have T Higgins, who in any other universe would just be like a classic old school throwback X receiver in that not in the Andre Johnson tier or anything like that.

17:06But he so perfectly fits in that bucket that allows him to do a lot more with Chase than certainly what he was doing at LSU when he was pretty much just an outside vertical receiver for that awesome offense in his final season there.

17:17Robert Mays: Well, things I want to ask you about this specific topic. One, this may be hard to pin down and I'm putting you on the spot, but I'm curious. When do you feel like that part of being a number one receiver where you must be moved around the formation, you must be deployed in all of these ways for us to be getting the most out of you and for us to be maximizing the offense? When do you think that fully clicked into place for you as kind of a non-negotiable part of what an optimized offense should look like? That's a great question. I think probably around like 2020, 2021, I would say that was when I started to think.

17:54Well, and maybe that's even a little bit too late because I would have even said, and like there are receipts of me saying this. I'm like Julio Jones should be in the slot at least like 25 to 30 percent and sometimes that happened sometimes it didn't um so and and he's obviously like the alien of all aliens so it's easy to say that for him but I do think if you're you're you're doing a disservice really to not have that player used in that way at that high of a rate and then Jefferson's just been a great example where like when Kevin O 'Connell got there there was this big talking point of and even Jefferson kind of on a couple of shows said it and maybe leaned into it too much like oh I'm going to be playing in the Cooper Cup role and he definitely did not play in the Cooper Cup role like whatsoever like what Cooper Cup did for the Rams in 2021 and then what Justin Jefferson has been doing under Kevin O 'Connell is totally different but it was just like enough of turning the knobs that it like if we can make that impact on 10 percent or bring down his rate of X receiver snaps 10 percentage points or something like that that makes a pretty significant difference to the overall potency of the offense.

18:59Robert Mays: So I think why do you say that? Like, where do you think that potency manifests to you for both the opportunities the player is getting and for the quality and health of the offense overall? Why is it important that you give your best player opportunities from that spot within the offense? Going back even to the Ted Rowe and McMillan example we were just using at the beginning. You know, this was something McMillan said to me during the conversation we had in February, he just brought up like how much more difficult it is to take that player out of the game when you are the movement guy, when you don't know where he's lining up pre-snap, when you are blurring those lines between the slot and outside.

19:38And I mean, like, especially in the way that we're dealing with defensive coverages now, where we are in a real split safety heavy world and everything, if you're just having that guy run as the outside receiver. He's on the ball. He's not in motion and he's running kind of that traditional X vertical route tree. And it does depend obviously on different offenses and everything like that. But it's just easy to, you know, again, to use the tortured word here, sacrifice that player to coverage in that way. It's harder to get the ball to those players when they are just caught in the zones on the outside, as opposed to if you're moving that guy around, it's more difficult to double him.

20:15I mean, that was part of the thing. You know, if you look at like what Mike Evans was doing versus what Cooper Cup was doing when those two teams were in the Rams and Bucks were like facing off in the playoffs and stuff like that this is a lot more difficult when you don't know where Cooper Cup is going to be when he is tighter to another player to like truly assign multiple eyes to a guy like that like you can have multiple eyes on him in zone coverage and everything but it's just a lot it's a lot easier when the guy's just stationary outside to be like hey we're going to dedicate two bodies here we're going to cloud these windows up I think that's probably the number one thing is it just is is is more difficult for a defense to take the player away and then conversely that creates layups for your quarterback like all right this guy's just easier for me to find I know where he's going to be he doesn't even have to be the first read in the progression but if I know I'm going to get back to him and he's going to be on more of a one-on-one situation that's not to say that Justin Jefferson is getting a lot of one-on-one situations but I think it's easier uh for the whole situation for a player to just get those layups in

21:14Robert Mays: Other than those two guys, is there anybody that kind of fits the more traditional number one wide receiver archetype that you think their team does a good job of creating those opportunities for them? I know that's a very small list of players. It's probably a terrible question, but I'm just curious if anybody else comes to mind where you're like, I love how this guy is deployed and it's not necessarily Jamar Chase or Justin Jefferson and it's not that shifting idea of a number one receiver we talked about earlier. so I think that Drake London in Atlanta the last two years would be one of these guys and and he's he's a little funny because now he almost does kind of get grouped into that big slot bucket but when he was coming into the league and it's certainly his first two years in Arthur Smith's offense like that was the stationary outside on ball player you know on the vast majority of his snaps and he's someone that I think you can where you can really take that yeah this is a pretty classic X receiver body and really jack up the potency and efficiency of that individual player.

22:14So he was a good example of this very fast. I had to see what he looks like in a new offense. It's like, you know, sometimes you get these like slight nagging concerns in the back of your head. That's like something that I, I'm just like, that's a different offense. And I don't, you know, we'll see what Zach Robinson does in Tampa Bay, you know, Falcons fans hate the guy, but I think he's objectively good for wide receiver usage. Like what we've seen the last two years.

22:34Robert Mays: to me it's more about areas of the field that the quarterback is accessing when it comes to drake london's production like when i think about drake london how many run after catch opportunities over the middle of the field on in breaking routes did drake london have over the last two years not that many and i think that he legitimately could be weaponized in that way in a way that he never has been before the quarterback play is obviously who the hell knows like how that's going to go the overall quality of it but the idea just as a thought exercise of kind of inverting the areas of the field that drake london has been effective in over the last couple years is at least interesting to me because i do think it unlocks a version of him that i want to see and for drake london too like his route tree and like the like the routes he's run most often has has really shifted based on who the quarterback is like in 2024 and i think these are the two uh best seasons to kind of use for him because it's the same offensive coordinator and everything like that uh he ran a curl route on 16 of the routes i charted that year that year this past season with primarily michael pennix under center it was up to like 22 you know so and i think a lot of that is just this is where the quarterback wants to throw the ball and so you kind of have to map that way but i think originally what they wanted out of him drake london and this offense was to be that big in breaking route player was to be like running crossing routes and dig routes over the middle of the field which is what i think they'll probably want to make a buka to be this year, which that's going to be a huge welcome change for him.

24:02Like when we, I think we, when did we last have that conversation about like the changing archetype of wide receivers? I think that was when the Buka was really crushing it at the beginning of the season. It was like five weeks into the year.

24:12Robert Mays: He looked like the greatest player in the history of the league. Exactly. And he looked like, Oh, this is going to be the next one. I'm sure we said that maybe not. We I'll say, I'm sure I said that on the show did not age well. Cause I mean, number one, he had a hamstring injury, picked up everything like that, But he also is a great example of this where he, because he was, you think of the other body types in that Tampa Bay receiver room last year without Mike Evans. It's Chris Godwin, who's always been a better big slot receiver than he is on the perimeter, especially his career has gone on.

24:40He's also coming off a major injury, doesn't look like himself. And the other receivers like Tez Johnson, who probably weighs less than you and Sterling Shepard. Like, I mean, Sterling Shepard 10 years into his NFL career. So, I mean, yeah, you're going to end up playing Emeka Ibuka as a vertical X receiver way too often when he came into the league as a big slot receiver prospect. And he showed an ability, much like London in a dynamic role pre-snap early on, to win on these big, big in-breakers. And again, I think that's another way where if you're moving this player, they're detached, they're off the ball and everything.

25:16you're going to just bring them into the quarterback's vision on these bigger in breakers, especially if you are somebody who is comfortable and willing to work over the intermediate middle of the field, which I mean, I think is pretty key at this point. Then you're just going to bring that guy into the quarterback's line of sight often. And it's going to be one, a place of big plays and also safety and security to get those layups when it's a more shallow route and everything like that. So, again, I think that's going to be interesting to watch for a Buka this year to see if he can be in more of that role and just kind of the other players in the room there.

25:46They're another really fascinating example of like, what do the rest of the guys look like around the player that I'm assuming they want to be their featured player, which was their first pick last year.

25:56Robert Mays: I wonder how often, we talk about this so much, just the idea of what a healthy offense looks like, like what an offense looks like where everything is cohesive. You're getting the most out of your players. You're maximizing all of them. And obviously what that looks like for an offensive line and the structure and composition of the offense is different than it is for a receiver. but I'm curious just on the whole, what the Venn diagram looks like of offenses that are maximized and receivers that are used in the right deployments, because there are some examples where like, I don't think the offense is broken, but the receivers probably aren't maximizing the right deployments.

26:29Robert Mays: The Cardinals over the last couple of years to me are like the perfect example of this. But I think more often than not, those two circles are overlapping. Like if you are running an offense where you're able to get the most out of your players, having the right deployments for your receivers almost 100 % of the time is an element of that because the guys just look completely different based on the roles that you're asking them to play. I know. And that's where I've almost gotten like more radical about why ranking receivers is just a pointless exercise. Like if I sit down and rank my top 10 receivers, I think a player like Amon Ross St.

27:05Brown and Nico Collins are going to be like close together. And what the how's the point of comparing those two players based on like with the strengths of their game you sit down and watch like which is you know obviously what i do you stand and watch eight games of uh i'm gonna say brown and eight games of nico collins you're gonna come away with like i mean they're just basically playing two different positions who cares like comparing them side by side so yeah i see i see your point that way where guys can just be completely you know misunderstood as players beyond just the outside variables of the quarterback and everything like that it really is like putting these guys in positions to succeed and sometimes I mean what are you going to do like it really is relative to the rest of the room I mean I think Jacksonville is going to be in that position this year but to go back to one of the one of the things you said there that I think um is something I think about a lot is we're projecting receivers going to the season and go back to that Colts example when you're running white hot and you're running pure and this example maybe isn't perfect because the Colts obviously did fall off in the back half of the year when you're running white hot and you're running pure i do think like that's when the x receiver that vertical guy can become just so so brought to life there i think pickens is a good example in dallas last year but i think when your offense finds a little bit of chaos like that's when you do kind of need that not bunny hop slot receiver but the the easy answer like the slot guy to just keep the offense on schedule especially if your run game isn't very good then And, you know, again, so when you're running the ball well, your offensive line is awesome.

28:34Like you have the right quarterback who's dialed in with the system and everything. Yeah, you can probably funnel the offense, even if it's not from a high volume perspective. You can funnel an offense through that vertical X receiver. But if you don't have all those three things or you have one of the three things, I think that's when you do kind of need that secondary answer to really be more of a take on a higher burden within the passing game than you probably do in other situations.

28:58Robert Mays: I don't think it's necessarily causal and that if you're not deploying guys in the right way, it leads to. That's the main culprit when it comes to like feeling uneven offensively. But I think that there's enough correlation where like I'm trying to think of like an example about a house. If like if you saw like a yard, they're like a something, a yard that was like totally overgrown. You wouldn't be surprised that there was like black mold hiding somewhere in the house. And that's kind of how I feel about like the 2024 Bears. It's like the fact that they use the receivers wrong isn't the reason the offense it was broken is was broken.

29:32Robert Mays: But I promise you it's an indication of what we're trying to talk about here. Yeah, it's a symptom of a larger disease. Yeah, I mean, it's like when you start to get in shape, you put your you put your body together. You're probably going to want to dress a little bit differently to, you know, to show that off. And like, you know, I wouldn't know anything about that personally. But let me speak from personal experience. But yeah, I think that's it's to your point. Like it's, it's probably indicative that something else is going wrong here, especially be like, there's so many good receivers in the league.

30:04We could, we could sit here and just rattle off this guy, this guy, that guy, and this guy. That's where it's like, I mean, there are some guys that just will never end up being fully maximized from a production standpoint because of, of usage, like kind of these trapped players, even if it's, well, they're great, but they could be 10 % better. They could be, you know, this, that, and the other. Like, I think that does really hold things back from an individual player perspective. And then certainly it's like, OK, well, if we're not maximizing this great, like, again, Drake London to come back to him in the first two years with the Atlanta Falcons.

30:33Like, there was clearly so much more meat on the bone there. It wasn't like their first problem was not that, well, Drake London takes too many snaps at X receiver. They had a lot of other issues in those two years with Drake London. They're much bigger problems. But again, it just it starts to make you ask those questions. Like, yeah, to me, I think, you know, tight end usage and offensive line use offensive line, just like rules and protection, everything like that. That's probably like the foundation of the house. That's right. But but, you know, yeah, the shutter is falling off like your receiver is not quite in the right role.

31:04There's probably something else going on there.

31:06Robert Mays: Yeah, I think that's the first place to start, because I think when you see an offense implode in on itself, protection is the first place that it happens. I'm thinking about like the worst examples in recent memory, like certain versions of the Texans, the Raiders offense last year, the Colts, the last Frank Wright Colts team, like every single one of those teams. The collapse starts with protection, but the receiver usage is usually correlated with that. Another was just the one and only year of Ryan Grubb with the Seattle Seahawks. Yeah. They took forever to get to like, we should probably make Jackson Smith and Jig with a featured receiver, but that wasn't their biggest problem.

31:40Their biggest problem is their protection rules were completely a mess, but there was

31:44Robert Mays: the shotgun 95 % of the time asking their offensive linemen who were not great to block. Good luck, boys. Good luck, boys. But at the same time, it's like one thing that could have helped there was maybe we run the offense through the guy that separates at an extremely high level as opposed to the other way around. We'll talk about guys like that in a second, but first let's take our first quick break. One thing I love about summer is how easy everything feels. Days are a little more relaxed and I find myself reaching for the same comfortable go anywhere pieces again and again. That's why I keep coming back to Quince.

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34:01Robert Mays: All right, so let's start with a guy that you can build the whole offense around. I think the JSN is, you're probably right in the sense that at this point, I don't even mean this as a slight because I'm with you in that when we had that conversation in week five of last year, it was easy to bucket JSN that way in part because we had just come out of the preseason discussion when we were talking about whether he could be that sort of guy within the offense. because he was a slot receiver. And so at that point in time, bucketing him with Puka and Amon Ross and Brown made sense. Now, like what JSN is and the verticality to his game and the explosiveness, he is a little bit of a different player than those two guys.

34:38Robert Mays: I think he's probably closer to Jefferson and Chase in terms of like how I think about him than he is to those two guys. But let's just say agnostic of style. If you're trying, if you have a guy that is your true number one guy, that you can move all around and you could build the offense through him. What in your minds are the vital complementary skill sets that you have to put around that type of player? Yeah, I do think you want, if we're going to do this, where, all right, we're taking this player, but we're also not using him as the outside on ball receiver, the X on 80 % of his snaps or whatever.

35:11You also therefore need another guy. I'd prefer it to be a bigger body player. I think the Vikings have Jordan Addison, and he can do some of this stuff, but there's just some limitations there where he's more of that, like just true number two as opposed to like, is he more of a 1B, which essentially is just a fancy way of saying a number two receiver. But it just helps us categorize these things. You want that player to be probably a bigger body who can line up on the perimeter and beat man coverage. I think that's the ideal thing. And this is probably more of a broad point than the exact question that you're asking, but it drives me crazy when we've gotten into a point where because the league-wide zone rates have gotten so high, people act like beating man coverage isn't as important.

35:57It might be less important, maybe, maybe than it was certainly five or ten years ago, whatever. But it's still, number one, the best player isolating metric that we have, in my opinion. Two, not in my opinion. If you can do that, you could probably do a lot of the other stuff. Correct. Correct. Yes. And even if the zone, and this gets into like really nerdy, how do you chart this or how do you chart that stuff? Even if the zone rates are higher, like these, a lot of these situations end up turning into match coverage anyways, where you're going to need man coverage skill sets to be able to get to uncover from these, these DBs down the field.

36:34So that's just like a whole side point. But anyways, yeah, I do think you need like that secondary player to be a bigger body who can win against man coverage, who can credibly line up on the perimeter and win at all three levels. That's like in an ideal situation. And some of these guys have that. Some of these guys don't. But to me, I do think that's – I wouldn't call it a non-negotiable, but it's like the ideal thing is that body type. But I think somebody that can credibly line up on the outside is really – is kind of paramount to have as that number two person there.

37:03Robert Mays: Well, let's take the man coverage point first. yeah it's not important until you become the chiefs it's not important until you become the late season bills because when offensive coordinators smell blood in the water when they don't think you have that guy though and especially when your quarterback is good especially in those cases then it becomes a we're going to make those guys beat us and that's why you see the chiefs and the bills last year don't playing against more man coverage than any team in the league because it's just like we don't the quarterback is good the rest of the guys we are not scared of we are showing you that by the way that we're playing so it's not important until it is your ability to be man coverage overall as an offense and and again this is a tough thing where i'm gonna and i i'm i'm definitely lower than consensus certainly relative to like people in the fantasy industry alongside me on a guy like rasheed rice because there's nothing wrong with the fact that rasheed rice does not beat man coverage like the fact that he's this really strong zone beater he wins with the ball in his hands and he brings a lot of physicality when he's a run after catch player there's nothing wrong that he does like really really clearly have these limitations against press man coverage until the other guys around him also can't do it yes that's where it becomes problematic because if especially in okay now that guy's your feature player well like it just again it's a cascading effect and like yes the league-wide zone rates are up but you know when the league-wide rant man coverage rates go up critical down and distance situations in the red zone it's like yeah those are those are pretty important downs so that's neat we can get the five yards against zone coverage on on first down what about on third and six and everything like that when you start to get behind the sick the sticks and all that so yeah to me i think that's like if you're that if your number one player is going to be someone that you know is an average or below average man coverage receiver but they're really good against zone like then i think you almost have to have somebody on the perimeter to do more of the traditional man press work to be that X receiver body type, you know, the guy that this kind of clicked for me way, not way back in the day, but you know, several years ago now, I guess it's almost 10 years ago now at this point was Juju Smith Schuster when he was with the Steelers.

39:11It's like, well, yeah, he's putting up a lot of great production, but the offense is going to go to, to go to hell. If like Antonio Brown's not there, Antonio Brown leaves, Juju falls off after that. There's some other, you know, kind of mitigating factors and everything there. But so, so yeah. And I almost kind of wonder if you can't then have that player be like a true featured piece if you don't have the secondary threat there so on the inverse of that someone like Amon Ross St. Brown kind of started off as that player but has just gotten better and better every single year that I think he's graduated out of that like he's now really good in these isolated press man situations not like you're going to have him run as the X receiver run a go route and stack a DB down the field you're not going to ask him to do that but where you do ask him to run routes as a press man beater i think now he's gotten into that category where even he's not really just this limited slot player that lives there because he has to live there at this point i think that the team in the situation that

40:06Robert Mays: really illuminated it for me where you have this kind of counterbalance of a receiver that really is only viable against zone coverage and the man beating receiver that helps make him even more viable is the Brandon Iucadibo Samuel Niners like that that to me is like the best like when you look at those two skill sets and the puzzle pieces that almost fit together in that way they make each other better because you're truly in a pick your poison situation when you have those two guys who could do those things there's a reason that the 49ers signed Mike Evans this offseason because and there's a reason that the offense felt so weird I mean there's a lot of injuries a lot of a lot of things happened last year to the Niners but they kind of had to cobble together like what they were hoping Brandon Iyuk would come back to be with Jawan Jennings and Ricky Pearsall which are you know two quality players in their own right but neither one of them can do the things that Evans is going to do for them this year that Iyuk did for them at his at the peak of his powers like yeah again that's a great Iyuk's a great point of this and it's like almost sad to talk about at this point because uh nobody was higher on brandon iuke uh before and during his ascension in 2023 than me um we were in the boat together buddy i was i was so big big brandon iuke guy for a very long time i never stopped believing even when it seemed like it was going to be a little rocky we came out on the other side yeah nothing is more depressing uh than uh have like a new dynasty rankings tool on reception perception nothing is more depressing whenever I open it up and like do the update there.

41:39I'm like, all right, so how much further are we dropping Iuke this time? Like, which just keeps going down and down and down. But his true ascension in 23, like to me, is the reason that that offense went from, like it's one of the best every single season to, you know, it goes to like nuclear levels. Yes, when you have a player like that, it just brings the entire room together, both from what they do, like being one of and now you get his the peak of his powers was truly like and a capital e elite press man coverage receiver so it's what that player can do for you but it's also then from just a coverage standpoint what he does for everybody else here like he is the sacrificial player that isn't a sacrifice you know and that's why i think i've almost like it's again this is where i mentioned this earlier like the sacrificial ex-receiver bit has kind of jumped the shark and that all like being an ex-receiver is not good like we don't want to you don't want a receiver to be an ex like no you do like you definitely definitely do that really matters and it brings the entire offense together number one and number two if that player is like good enough then yeah they're going to be an absolute nightmare out there at that standpoint so yeah that's the best example of like taking a not even just a great but like an incredible offense and making them historically efficient when you can find that player again easier said than done to find that player.

43:02Robert Mays: When you talk about those complimentary, like number two guys who have a varied skill set can do a little bit of everything on ball, off ball, who are the guys that come to mind for you that you feel like capably filled that role last year? And they're the types of players you think about when you're describing somebody like that. You know who I think has kind of become this guy after having one of the worst rookie seasons of all time? like i kind of think quentin johnson has become that guy interesting um and he's okay in a way like he's not this we can you we we've got to move i think there's a there's a world where quentin johnson if you used him like uh i don't know like not not like rasheed rice because that's just so limited rice is like literally the lowest a dot of any receiver over the last three years but you know something in that kind of role where he's a guy i'd be thinking about would be like christian watson and jameson williams like guys guys like that and the way that they were used last year especially uh oh man put a pin in the lions thing because i want to come back to to them in a second but but yes like that's a good christian watson is a good example where he does play a lot outside but he is so detached he's in motion you're running him on these big breaking routes and everything like that yeah that's a that's a good way uh of putting it but he is still quentin johnson at least in the old offense with greg roman still primarily an X receiver.

44:24So he wasn't really used in this way. I mean, they definitely spit the ball out to him and let him run after the catch. But because he's become this like, I would say solid starting receiver, he's almost gotten into the zone where like Corey Davis was when he was the number two across from AJ Brown. It's like he's not what he was. He wasn't. He's not what he was drafted to be, but he's not really bad anymore. And like when you're going to get into these, you know, heavy personnel packages is like expect the Chargers to do. I think Quentin Johnson is a good fit in that offense in that way and he allows you because he can credibly be now uh not like a great downfield receiver he's always going to have some issues at the catch point but but he's he's a lot better than he was three years ago that allows them to still move lad mcconkey around like if you actually take what quentin johnston's best routes are if you look at his like route success rate chart in reception perception and you map that onto like what jalen wattle was asked to do for the Dolphins.

45:18It's actually pretty perfect, which I think means Waddle was not maximized. I think he will be maximized in Denver, but it also means that I think that's going to credibly be the role that Johnson takes to allow them to do all the fun move around stuff with Ladd McConkie.

45:32Robert Mays: How do you think the shift to more heavy personnel changes this discussion? Do you think that it changes what you want in that second receiver, or do you think that the main impact and how you're putting that group together is mostly about and more about diminishing the value of a true slot receiver in the way that we traditionally think about them. I think it definitely changes what a slot receiver is. And I mean, I think we're almost seeing the traditional slot receiver kind of die the last two years, like go away. Those players just aren't as relevant anymore, which I think means that you still, to me, it's then on the play caller to find creative ways to allow a guy like Josh Downs to be used in two receiver sets which i think you can do like you can have the two tight ends on one side of the field and like nate and i had a whole conversation about this on 301 i think maybe like a few weeks ago now at this point where you're talking specifically about downs where you can you can game these things out and you can make it happen where you've got the two tight ends on one side of the field and then you have pierce's the x receiver and downs in the slot even if it's a two receiver set like you can make that happen so that's definitely a part of it because these guys are too good to be completely forgotten about i think jayden reed is another guy that's been in this bucket that I think hopefully they can figure some things out with him this year.

46:48So yeah, that's definitely part of the story. But I think the main impact of all this heavy personnel usage last year and probably this year as well, it just consolidates things around the number one receiver so much. This is typically what we see happen when teams get into these heavy personnel looks is you see the efficiency and the per route target numbers jack up for the top receiver on the team. This was a big reason JSN had the season that he had last year because, number one, you're really able to blend the run and pass game so your play-action game comes to life. You're going to get more favorable looks for that number one as opposed to if they are on the boundary and 11 personnel and everything like that.

47:35So you can, I mean, JSN last year was, I kind of hate that like every receiver discussion has just evolved to like a JSN discussion, except I don't because he's an incredible player. But like he was the best receiver in the NFL to me last year on the 90 degree breaking points. If we're talking about like in routes and out routes in the intermediate area, especially because he's such a good liar. In addition to, I know you, I think had the quote from Sam Darnold about like any, and I've heard other people repeated about like how he runs routes. Like he's on skates. he's also just so deceptive with his head fakes that like he can sell you out before he breaks in better than anybody else in the nfl right now or at least in the 2025 season but the purest

48:14Robert Mays: expression i think of the things that you have come to like really appreciate and study over the last decade and me just is my inherent taste like for a long time i think you and i liked the same players you came at it from a much more process oriented standpoint mine was just like much more vibes based but i think it's rude it was rooted in a lot of the same things and i think in a lot of ways jsn is like the best possible expression of that ideas and that like his dominance is so rooted in what he is as a route runner maybe more than any other like best receiver in the league that we have had in quite a long time yeah i mean i would say digs is up there yeah uh like and And even Diggs never had the season that Diggs never the offensive player of the year.

49:00No, no, much to my chagrin. But, yeah, no, I mean, Diggs is like the original reception. No, I mean, it's been around longer than that. But, yeah, he's one of the original reception perception, like Hall of Famers. If we were to ever do an inner circle Hall of Fame, he's up there. But, yeah, he had a lot of the same, like, deceptive tendencies. And, by the way, this is also why I think, you know, man coverage still matters because the reason that JSN was like I have no concerns. I had no concerns last year about him going outside from the inside because he's always been an awesome man coverage receiver.

49:30And even, yes, beating man coverage on the perimeter, different than beating man coverage in the slot. We're still talking about translatable skills here. So anyways, my point in saying all that is that, like, if you're able to get those situations in heavy personnel, like, you're just creating a lot more space for that player to do exactly that, to do all the lying and the fibbing and everything. So that's why you really see these teams get heavy. and then, yeah, the number one target or even if it's the secondary target, you create a lot more consolidation around that player. So I think that's almost been kind of lost in some circles as we talk about all the influx of more tight ends and all these heavy personal packages.

50:03It's not like we're not getting heavy to, like, pump targets to our second tight end. We're getting heavy so we can get explosive plays down the field to the badass wide receivers. So bias admitted as the chief lobbyist for wide receiver nation. But yeah, to me, that's the story of this, less so like we're creating interesting plays for our second tight end.

50:26Robert Mays: The JSN emergence, I think, driven in large part, not in large part, but driven in part by the way the league has shifted. We're going to take one more quick break and then want to come back and chat about a few more of the elements that have shifted as we've seen some evolution offensively in the league. it's smart to always have a few financial goals and a really smart one you can set earning cash back on what you buy every day and with discover you can get this discover automatically matches all the cash back you've earned at the end of your first year seriously all of it and we trust you to make smart decisions after all you listen to this show see terms at discover.com slash credit card.

51:06Okay.

51:11Robert Mays: All right, so as we've gotten to the place we're in now, whether it's condensed formations, heavier personnel, whatever, however you want to describe the offensive meta in the NFL as we embark on the 2026 season, what in your mind because of that are the things that have fallen by the wayside and are less important to you, and what do you think are the things that have become underrated in how we think about receiver skill sets and archetypes as we've moved into this world? So I think the biggest thing that's changed, at least or in a way maybe is overrated at this point, is just like body types to me.

51:49I think it still definitely matters, but to me, we have opened up pathways and we've opened up the door for different body types to be eligible at different positions and to me that was this comes back to Cooper Cup with the Rams like and maybe even St. Brown and in certain ways to like I think maybe St. Brown's a little bit different but like Cooper Cup was you know he's bigger than you think he is raised over 200 pounds over six feet like I think you know 10 years ago that guy gets looked at and it's like well that's our you know he's a big body to X receiver whatever but but now like that those body types have just changed so much at this point that I think size profiling to me, I think is like, we're so far past that.

52:32And in my opinion, even with guys that are smaller players, I think they can be so protected by the scheme much more than they were maybe, you know, five years ago and everything like that. So to me, I think that's almost like, I care less about that than ever. Now there's definitely limitations to to you know what your body can handle like I love Ladd McConkie but I wonder if he is like a Tyler Lockett player where he can't you know can he can his body handle like 140 150 targets I don't know about that but I think from an efficiency standpoint he can still be incredible if you you know run the passing game through him so I think that's that's like a even Zay Flowers is another great example I mean shoot Zay Flowers is a player that he he looks like he should be the well he only plays in three receiver sets because he's like this guy that guy but that's never been the case for zay he's never been a and this kind of crystallizes um for me randomly because i'm i'm kind of in my own little bubble with how i think about receivers at times but um thank god for youtube comments that's the first time anyone's going to say that in in history uh because it opens you up to a wider uh dialogue of like what people think about players and i I remember I put out a video of my kind of pet theory that I think, based on all that we're talking about here, that I think Elijah Surratt is the perfect guy to go from a collegiate perimeter receiver and kick inside, based on his reception, perception profile, and his charting data.

54:00I love that there's already been some kind of talk about that from Eric DaCosta as well. But I did this whole breakdown on him being that guy, and half the comments are like, well, what about Zay Flowers? What about Zay Flowers? It's like, Zay Flowers has never been a soft receiver. receiver yeah it's never a slot receiver for the ravens people just think that because he's 5 9 185 pounds or whatever so i think the other part of this is also the ravens never had a slot receiver

54:23Robert Mays: the ravens are playing 10 11 personnel for most of his career oh yeah trust me when i was looking up the uh the the the lowest slot rates that we were talking about earlier with george pickens and tedrow mcmillan there's a you know my therapist doesn't let me talk about rashad bateman anymore but i did notice that there's like three rashad bateman no slot usage seasons in the in the bottom 10 uh over the last three years but anyways um yeah no i think that the body types thing really to me has been the thing that's changed the most uh in terms of the last like four or five years or so uh when we've we've changed these schemes and everything it's so important to point out in part because it still goes the other way where i think you have teams profiling these guys based solely on body type and not on skill set and it becomes some of the most misguided and disappointing prospect stories that we currently see at the position like the key on Coleman's is the best example right where it's like you you look at Keon Coleman and you see the way he's built and the way you know he theoretically moves and it's like oh yeah that's an X receiver it's like no he's not and if you keep trying to use him that way that's where you're going to be in trouble and so I think in our world and in your world specifically this is something that you become very attuned to where like the idea of moving a player that's physically built like that inside is there's nothing wrong with that it's not a taboo thing to mention or suggest anymore but in the nfl i think we still have this very kind of traditional becoming archaic thinking about what types of bodies you have to use in these sorts of situations yeah i i wrote a piece for uh rp this uh during the draft season um did a youtube breakdown on it for the folks that don't like to read uh as well where uh over the last class all the classes that I've charted, I have 45 players in the poor separation bucket, which is guys that are below the 35th percentile in at least two of the three man zone press coverage.

56:17So 45 players, 42 % of them were cut on their rookie contract. So it's like, yeah, that's typically what happens is these guys don't work out. Even if you just look at day one and day two picks, it is 30 % of the players were cut on their rookie contract. So, yeah, obviously not great, but almost all of the guys, they either become these kind of volatile deep threat types, which I would, you know, Will Fuller was in this bucket. Christian Watson was in this bucket. I think Watson had the best season of his career last year, which is incredible, coming off a torn ACL. But I would still, for most of his career, has been like kind of that volatile deep threat type.

56:50All the guys that have become like high, high volume players have become these big slot options. So while, yes, it is that. And by the way, like Keon Coleman, yeah, definitely should have probably at least become. And that's the thing, too, is like, does Keon Coleman need to be a big slot receiver? He might be too big to be a big slot receiver, honestly. And Coleman obviously has created his own problems as well with his work habits and everything like that. But even if he becomes like an off ball player, becomes kind of that bigger Z type. Jaden Higgins.

57:17Robert Mays: They make him Jaden Higgins. This is the thing, like Higgins is going to go down as one of these guys like, well, you know, I said he probably should kick into the slot as a prospect and I did, but he might never become a true slot option. But I think he will become like an off ball player that gets some of the movement work. And that's like good enough. So that's another thing I think that like I'm changing my opinion on the last like two or three draft classes. it's just like don't hang that guy out at x just because he's you know over six feet over six foot four and 215 or whatever so yeah there's still a lot a good bit of profiling in the league and there's still a good bit of profiling honestly you know from from fan bases as well like i think to me i like i mean i to talk about your bears for a second here i mean i think like ben johnson uh it was probably the best coach in the nfl last year at blurring these interpositional lines like we still have people trying to fit like who's in the slot bucket who's an extra receiver bucket i mean nobody was in those buckets last year especially like that's not what those players are and that's not what those players should be no exactly so i think like that just again the blurring the lines there it's like yeah can adunze be a z receiver even if he looks like a classic x yes can burden be on the vertical plane even though he has that kind of we were talking about this me and you offline the other day like kind of a weird mix between like is he rishi rice and zay flowers ish like yeah can he be that guy and still work as a boundary player 100 because they have the skill sets to do it so to me it's almost made me even more like granular and radical about what do these guys do from a skill set standpoint not like what do they look like and profile as from a body type standpoint so if the body types is overrated what do you think has become underrated in how we think about the ways in which we fit these guys together.

59:08I think spatial awareness is like so underrated. And because, again, I'm going to talk out of both sides of my mouth here where I said like, man, coverage is still really important. Obviously, yes, that's true. But when you were like being able to beat zone coverage, I think just being aware of everything on the field, like having that, okay, if I'm going to work on like a hook route or anything, like like really back into the format into the field being able to know like where people are after the catch i think is is critical like being able to transition from i'm a route runner transitioning into a ball carrier and doing that quickly i think spatial awareness is a big part of that you know tenacity and mindset is also a big part of that too so that i think has become kind of the underrated part of the position these guys who can one just be aware of like where guys are from a coverage standpoint both pre and post catch but then also yeah that quick transition to being a ball carrier even if you're not going to be a tackle breaker like there are some guys that just don't have it from a tackle breaking standpoint for one reason or another but if you can at least pick up a few extra yards after the catch i think spatial awareness is a big part

1:00:11Robert Mays: of that do you know who's the guy that made me think about that exact type of thing where it's like he's if you give him these opportunities consistently getting four or five more yards than the play originally would be designed to get it's jack besh is like watching what jack besh did in those moments last year where it's like you don't have to be AJ rookie year AJ Brown to be to add value after the catch if you have good spatial awareness and understand where they're going to be some opportunities Jack Besh I mean maybe the most misused receiver in the entire NFL last year stupid to say because like who cares about Jack Besh on the worst team in the NFL I care about jack bash on the worst team in the nfl i'm like that will i will be bothered for the rest of time how the raiders treated those two rookie receivers last year and especially like there was no poor dante thornton man i mean listen i was like i thought dante thornton was a day three receiver he goes on day three just to get pushed into the deep end like that is insane because there was no reason he was ever going to be ready for that as a you know raw prospect out of the looney tunes offense in tennessee but then even then like jack best gots on the field like he's the ex receiver for this team it's it's insane like he's another guy from a body type standpoint like that's the exact thing i just like could cooper cup have been jack besh if he had went to the wrong team that sounds dumb to say because the cooper cup had one of the best wide receivers or seasons we have ever seen but i i think i think that 100 uh i'm on rossst brown could he have been jack besh if he'd gone to the wrong team 100 i think that and those guys obviously became better than justst brown especially became much much better than just like what this is where it's annoying when people say oh he compares to amon rossst brown tell what amon rossst brown are you talking about are you talking about like the back half of his rookie season you're talking about this last year but anyways my point of saying that is that you got to get these guys just their foot in the door to then grow and develop and improve their skills both from like make strength stronger and let's edge out the weaknesses in their game you got to find the right role for them at the beginning and hopefully uh kubiak can do that for jack besh is here but yeah he's a great guy that like is he ever going to stack like these big plays where he breaks multiple tackles and he gets you 20 30 yards no but can he get you three or four extra a hundred percent because he's a power player and I think has that awareness with the ball in his hands a few more things I wanted to run through quickly the first thing is just talking about Jaden Higgins is I mean we talked a lot about Jaden Higgins pre-draft you and I just offline just going back and forth about Jaden Higgins and he's just going to be that type of player is always going to be sticky for me heading into the draft because I think there's going to need to be a necessary projection of the right deployment of him to see the best version of him.

1:02:56Robert Mays: And there's always going to be a little opacity in how that process goes. You need a little bit of imagination. And I think as I project and think about players, that's always my biggest issue is that I kind of see them for what they are. And he's the perfect example to me of like, you just see him getting stuck in all these man coverage situations. It's like, I don't like that. You know, that's not my flavor. But then when you don't put him in as many of those situations and you allow him to be like a Michael Pittman slasher, he can have a lot of value to the offense. But when you've never really seen him do exactly that in college, that projection becomes a little bit harder.

1:03:29Robert Mays: That's an aside. But like just I just he's the type of player where like even in the moment I was like, I this is going to be a sticky one for me. I'm just not sure how I'm going to work through this one. Listen, nobody cares about our excuses or anything like that. But this is why it's so hard to rank players pre-draft and especially for like your ranking nebulous prospects, right, where it's like, where is this guy going to go? Another example where this is, I think for Higgins, it worked out. But another example that did not work out was like Traylon Burks in the 2022 draft class. There are people that loved Traylon Burks.

1:04:03I, to me, was look, I'm not I'm not patting myself on the back here because I like Jahan Dotson and I still have a little candle lit for Jahan.

1:04:10Robert Mays: I was about to say, you still haven't given up on Jaha Dawson, so don't pretend like that door is closed. No, just a little candlelit. You know, like, I got to pull under the couch cushion. The stock is hidden under there somewhere. But I also probably just talk more. I definitely tweet more about the players I was wrong about than the players I was right about because the Internet is for having fun and making fun of yourself. But a whole separate conversation. Anyways, but in that draft class, like, Traylon Burks to me, like, you could never get him into the same tier, even close to guys like Olave, Wilson, London, even Jamison Williams, because he was going to take the right deployment and the right coaching staff.

1:04:51And I don't think I don't think Mike Vrabel is an idiot whatsoever, but like he goes to the Tennessee Titans and they pretty much looked at him and like, well, he's going to replace AJ Brown because he's a big bodied X receiver. And that went about when for a lot of reasons went about as bad as it possibly could have. And to me, I think that's always going to be difficult as in projecting those guys like without knowing the situation. And, you know, Higgins goes to goes to Houston. And I still think I would like to see Higgins take some X receiver reps just so we can move Nico Collins around. But yeah, but it's the same time, like even if he's like a 30 percent X receiver as opposed to an 80 percent or 70 percent, like we flip those ratios a little that that makes a huge difference to these guys.

1:05:30So, yeah, it's always going to be difficult before the draft to know. But then once you see it, like that's why you should hold on to these convictions kind of loosely with with these individual players.

1:05:41Robert Mays: Two more things. I want to talk about the groups that you feel like are really well composed and that like hit your brain in a pleasing way, because there are a few that come to mind for me that I think are worth exploring just a little bit. But the other player-specific thing I wanted to ask you, it feels like when we conceive of slot receivers now, if you're not like that big-body kind of power slot guy, we think more about vertical slots and just like the appeal of vertical slots. Like when you mentioned Jalen Knoll, it's like, I think he can be a vertical slot player within this offense. When do you think that started to shift in your mind about that being like one of the better types of slot players that you can have?

1:06:16Robert Mays: And why do you think it started to shift that way? So I think this comes back to the run game and some of these heavy personal packages that we're kind of in right now where I don't necessarily need like the bunny hop slot player, which is the archetype that I would group. Jamison Crowder or something, you know, you got people know who I'm talking about when I say it like Tyler Boyd. I don't necessarily need that player because we're getting better as a league right now finding explosive plays on the ground and we're just running the ball better right now. We don't need the Chiefs need it, which is why Rasheed Rice has been piling up targets because they have the lowest explosive rush rate by a good bit the last two years.

1:06:59But I don't need that player as much when I can find explosive plays on the ground. So again, it's like, well, this vertical, like can this slot receiver win along the vertical plane? Hunter Renfro, right? Like we don't need the Hunter Renfro slot receivers in the league right now when we're finding more explosive players on the ground. And I think as we're getting into heavier looks, like I'm really excited to watch teams try to access these players out of heavier looks on like big outbreaking routes. Because I typically have thought about like a Jalen Knoll type of guy being like a big post route player and everything like that.

1:07:32But, you know, the guy who, again, he's a Houston Texan, but like Tank Dell was one of the best receivers in the NFL on out routes in his rookie year.

1:07:42Robert Mays: It was my, I'm not, it makes me so happy to even think about it. It just like closing my eyes and picturing them is just like exactly how football should be played. Yeah. And they had some unbelievable route combinations where like Nico Collins was running these big in breakers and Tank Dell is working like corners and outs and comeback routes. And I think those routes are a lot. I think those routes are honestly going to see in a weird way, like a boost up this year once again, as teams get more heavy and condensed and they try to create like these slot looks with this archetype of player. I mean, I would love to see like a, yeah, Jalen Nola, Josh Downs, a Jaden Reed be that designated players where, you know, rip and play action shots off of, uh, ripping shots off play action to these guys on the out cuts and everything.

1:08:26So I think that's something I'm watching this year is can these receivers be accessed more outside the numbers because we're still looking to find explosive plays in those, in those areas. because you know if you're like the whole shots against cover two and everything like that tip yeah you can do that over the middle you want to do it over the middle like put your big boy pants on and rip it over the middle against cover two don't just try to mickey mouse this thing together but i think you can also find against certain coverages more of those out cuts as well so i i that's something where i think i've changed my opinion on the slot receiver there that like yeah because even parker washington i think looks like kind of the bunny hop slot from a body type standpoint but he's a downfield receiver uh you know honestly think when you're saying guys that

1:09:06Robert Mays: you to you are like those on ball off ball a little bit of everything type players that like are these complimentary number twos like he's the type of guy that comes to mind for me like i i think that he's somebody that he can do a little bit of everything despite the fact that he is a little bit undersized and maybe we put him into a box because of that you know he's bigger i think than you think. And he's an awesome contested catch player. Like he's so physical at the catch point. Yeah, like from a separation standpoint, he's like okay. You know, he's good. He's like above average, but he's not going to be like a Josh Downs type of receiver or anything like that.

1:09:43But yeah, he is probably among the guys I've charted this year, one of the best contested catch and one of the best tackle breaking receivers. I was watching an interview that Liam Cohen did with Peter Schrager today. and yeah he talked about like his his his ability with the ball in his hands is like something you as a coach you can't teach and I compared him to uh like Bud Light Golden Tate coming into the NFL Parker Washington but now he just kind of like is Golden Tate and I'm not talking about Golden Tate uh in John Jim Bob Cooter's like pop gun offense with the Detroit Lions I'm talking about like with the Seattle Seahawks where he was this ball winner a more vertical guy so yeah that's the type of player I think that's more eligible now to be your slot option than probably you know three or

1:10:27Robert Mays: four years ago so let's just talk very quickly before we get out of here when you're thinking about the groups that feel well composed and feel complimentary and feel constructed in a way where it all fits together in the right way you mentioned the Colts that to me that's the best possible example is like what the 2025 Colts look like who are the other teams in your mind where it's just like I like this and you know you don't have Jamar Chase or Justin Jefferson necessarily but the way that you put this group together, I think that you're thinking about it in the right way. Texans, I mentioned, even if I would be more flexible with the alignment for my number one guy in that situation, which is Nico Collins, I do think they've put together the room really well with three complementary skill sets for sure.

1:11:10I kind of think the Jets have weirdly as well. like if you and i don't know if it's all gonna work out yeah i know you're like an ad mitchell guy so ad mitchell kind of is like a you know he's an ex-receiver man i actually don't he's one of the few players i joked about this with james co when we were talking about ad mitchell after his rookie year nine times out of ten and i've done it a bunch on this show when i'm talking about a receiver i'm like i'd love to see him play in the slot more i'd love to see him off ball more 80 mitchell's like one of the players i don't never ask him to do that like just line up against press man coverage is the ex receiver like he can have the you know you mentioned like next gen needs to track this he can have the widest damn split from the ball of any receiver in the league great because that's what he's good at that and that that is it but he's like the best

1:11:57Robert Mays: case scenario for him is like the exact iuk profile that we were talking about from like 2023 like it's like that's he's not gonna get there like i don't think i think yeah of course even if i still believe in ad mitchell i don't think he ever becomes 2023 brandon iuk but in terms of like the ideal outcome for a player of that archetype i think that's kind of what you're thinking about looking at and a hundred percent and as a slot receiver omar cooper jr is kind of a really fun mix of i think someone that's really good on these out cuts um i did an interview with him before the draft and you know uh after and actually during the show he asked like i was talking about like what's his best route and he was talking about these out cuts i was like yeah that actually completely matches up with his charting and everything like that so um he can do that and also is a great option like well i just got the spit i just got to spit the ball out to somebody and hope they create after the catch well he could definitely do that so he's kind of that's what sadiq can be right i mean yes yeah totally and then garrett wilson's an awesome player like garrett wilson is especially if he is used more as the movement z type which um you know tanner angstrand not saying it was perfect last year but i did love the way they used receivers in that offense which hopefully that uh accounts for drake london because i think he's the pass game coordinator now uh in atlanta is tanner angstrand but anyways like he was the movement guy where they do so much where arian smith i i swear to god i think they drafted arian smith in the fourth round at the jets last year just so he could do that jimmy horn jr stuff i was talking about where like when he can be the sacrificial runoff like wins not the sacrificial X, but like the sacrificial, I don't know, slot, you know, like what Kalief Raymond is probably going to be for the Bears this year, what they hope Zavian Thomas is going to be this year or down the line for the Bears.

1:13:42Like, and they did a lot to then create these mismatches for Garrett Wilson in that way. So like he can kind of be that movement guy. That's your everything, the center of your universe. And then you have like a classic X and this really fascinating slot body type that can do a lot of different things. So the Jets weirdly have that as well.

1:13:58Robert Mays: the team i would throw out because i think it's an expression of one of the changing thoughts i've had about receivers is what the lions have i mean when you look at the group that the lions have i think the you know obviously like you talked about i'm on wrestling brown is like it's it's not interesting to say that he's like a number one receiver he's a really good player we know what i'm on russie brown is but i think when you look at what tesla is supposed to be within that offense to complement the players they already have that makes sense to me and then the jameson williams thing kind of points to something i've really started thinking about a lot more when it comes to what is the right usage and what is the most valuable deployment of pure speed in an nfl offense in 2026 because i used to think i mean the way that we thought about speed was you're lifting the top off the defense right like that's what speed is four in the in the nfl at receiver now with the way that teams are playing speed horizontally is way more important in my opinion when you look at those types of players than speed vertically and so having that's why like him and christian watson to me are like those types of guys where having a guy who in 20 years ago would have just been your outside the numbers burner as the guy that if i hit him on a crosser right now in that space between the second and third level that does exist in the modern NFL, like those become massively explosive plays.

1:15:18Robert Mays: And so that type of player and that type of usage, I wouldn't even be thinking about that in 2012 in the way that I'm thinking about it now. And I think you just see how useful and valuable guys of that build and skill set are compared to how we would have thought about them a while ago. You're a better podcast host than me because I did say I wanted to come back to the Lions. I said put a pin in that and this is the exact reason I wanted to come back to this because Isaac Tesla was a weird pick right when they made it at the time because they trade a lot of resources up up for him and everything but he was a lot of teams really liked him and he was going to go pretty soon if the if the Lions didn't jump up for him like I think the Saints were all over him at the very next pick but anyways and it was this is a weird player too because he had no college production was kind of this like big slot receiver at Arkansas but it was an athletic freak right and I remember I was like obsessed with talking about him in the pre-draft process because he was just such like this bizarre profile right and then especially once the Lions took him I'm like well he's not going to be their big slot receiver because it's St.

1:16:24Brown like it's not it's not going to be what he is but St. Brown last year took fewer snaps in the slot on the on a percentage basis than he ever has in at any point during his NFL career part of that is you know just naturally that they play in a lot of 12 and they play a lot of heavy personnel stuff so he's going to play as the z receiver and he's gotten better at being an outside player and so he's even a better z receiver than he was when he came into the league but a lot of that also was because tesla was able to take in the games i charted for him he was outside on 69 of his snaps and but he was off uh the line of scrimmage at like a 55 45 split so like he allowed them to get the best out ofst brown and allowed him to play more outside but also allowed jamison williams to take fewer snaps on the line of scrimmage because james williams good player uh in like an ideal world you don't necessarily want him to run out as your ex receiver a ton but he has to becausest brown you know you got your your role and i don't say role catering is like an insult but you're role catering to Amon Ross St.

1:17:26Brown because he's awesome and you're putting him in the best position to succeed so like there are a little bit of diminishing returns for JMO at times I mean that's why you go the first eight weeks of last season and he's just such an up and down producer as Jameis Williams but then they get Tesla more activated and I'm not even talking about from a production standpoint he might be one of like the lowest target per route run players in over the course of his career who cares because even what he does from like a formation standpoint allows them to just, again, get Jameis Williams off the ball so he can run these big in-cuts, like you said, stretch the field horizontally.

1:17:58I think Denver this year, Pat Bryan is going to be that guy. It's like the big burly slot on-ball option. Cortland Sutton's your ex. Jalen Waddell's usage is about to flip on its head from what it was in Miami, and I don't think enough people are talking about that. He's going to have a monster season in that offense. I could not be more excited about what Jalen Waddell's going to do because he's going to be that off-ball player more often than not. And then I mentioned the Bears, too. Like, I mean, do I want to spend, like, a third-round pick on a Zavian Thomas to do this stuff? If Ben Johnson wants to do it, he can do whatever he wants.

1:18:34But, like, I almost – He wants to do it. He can do whatever he wants. If he wants – I said this on our draft show. I was like, yeah, he has – it's just like Ben Johnson's biblical greed. Like, that's what he's got for these little, like, offensive kind of players. is the Sam Rauch, the Zavian Thomas, whatever. Let him do whatever he wants. Who cares? Anyways, like that third receiver being an indicator of what, even if they're never going to be productive for you, like on a big-time stats basis, they're never going to be like good players in fantasy. What they allow the top, not just one receiver, but the two receiver to do and maximize those players, it's so, so, so, so critical.

1:19:12So, yeah, I spend like an inordinate amount of time thinking about like the Zavian Thomas's, Khalif Raymond's going to be the guy that this year. It's funny how last year, you know, Ben Johnson's like, well, let me get Olamide Zaccheaus, like Devin Duvernay. I got to find myself a Kalief Raymond. Now he just was like, I'll just go get the real thing. And then a younger version of it again, biblical greed. But like in order, I'm out of time thinking about like what Xavier Thomas is going to do for the Bears in that way. What Tesla does for the Lions, what Pat Bryant does for the Denver Broncos.

1:19:38So, yeah, that guy being like kind of a little indicator of the future of the receiver room for these these teams, I think is pretty big.

1:19:45Robert Mays: The Tesla point, I think, is a good place to end because it comes back to what you were saying where it used to be this idea we'd have about where the receivers physically were within the offense dictated by their body types and their skill sets. Now, I think it's more about just combining skill sets that are agnostic of where the players are lining up and how you're necessarily using them. Like, that's how I think about the Lions, where it's like, I don't really care if he's the X receiver all the time. I just want that big ball winning presence within my offense that to me compliments the other players that I have.

1:20:17Robert Mays: And so we've kind of gotten to a place where to tie it all together, you do want skill sets that still tie that still are independent and fit well within one another. But the where where you're lining those players up, how we're designating those players that has become far less rigid, far, far less important than it would have when we were talking about the game a decade ago. especially as we think about and i know i'm sure you've thought about this i've thought about it a ton what's next like what's the next trend uh as as the league right now is obsessed with the the heavy personnel stuff because that that's the current trend or his last year trend like what's the next thing i've thought about here's a statement that you know lets you know just how exciting my life is i've thought a lot about like the panthers receiver room to come back to the mcmillan point and the panthers offense this year i think they're one of the teams that could really go against the trend and spread things out a ton get into empty with bryce young who had 96 attempts out of empty in 2024 and he was freaking benched that year last year drops down to 88 because i think they they got bigger and heavier and all that stuff now they have tedro mcmillan who they're saying can play all over the place i agree he can play all the place they have jalen coker you know my favorite pet receiver in the league is someone who can be an outside inside player.

1:21:39He is a power slot, but he's also a good man coverage receiver. So he allows him to do so. And then going at Chris Brazel, who like, yeah, he might be a sacrificial player, but they basically have like the I think from a skill set standpoint, have an ideal three receiver set if it's Brazel overly get. And I think it will be. But they're just all these big, hulking, massive receivers. so yeah we can also be we can run out of this stuff like we can spread things out and still have a credible run game because our guys are all big and like coker probably is like the best blocker of the group but like give some effort uh as blockers all of these guys so um you know we'll see if they get an inline tight end to kind of complete this whole thing together but yeah as i'm thinking about what's next i do wonder if teams run with more tempo spread things out like that and that kind of is the next thing that we're talking about love it all right that's all we got

1:22:32Robert Mays: thank you very much sir really really enjoyed that please tell the people where they can check out all of the great work you were doing about receivers and also not necessarily about receivers yes receptionperception.com is where all my receiver work lives we've got a lot on the site right now in addition to just my work on receivers but we built a new player comparison tool i mentioned new dynasty rankings tool in addition to all the profiles i've always written up for that site since its inception so still have player uh updates coming every single week now at this point uh leading up to the nfl season so a lot going on there and of course uh over at yahoo the yahoo fantasy forecast we ramp up to five days a week in august because man week one is rapidly approaching faster than we could ever imagine here.

1:23:21So we'll be up to daily there. We've got a great new crew with Josh and Hayden joining this year as well. So awesome times of Yahoo. Could not be more excited about this season.

1:23:29Robert Mays: I could not be more excited about you guys ramping up to five days a week when we get to August because it's when I'm in the car for five hours a day all throughout training camp. And so you guys are in my ears a lot during this stretch of the year. If you're not checking it out, please do. Thank you very much for the time, sir. We'll do it again very soon. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. All right, guys, that's all we got. Thank you so much to Matt Harmon. We will be back tomorrow with Cowboys offensive coordinator Clayton Adams. Spent a little bit of time with him earlier this week. This is actually talking about puzzle pieces fitting together.

1:24:00Robert Mays: Talk a lot about the past game here with Matt Harmon. Talk a lot about the run game with Clayton Adams, how you devise a modern run game, where some of his inspiration comes from, his love for putting that stuff together. Really enjoyed that conversation. think you guys will as well. Fun end to a great week, and we have training camp right on the horizon. So be sure to check out that show, and we will be back tomorrow. Talk to you guys later. Thanks for tuning in. Make sure to hit that subscribe or follow button so you never miss an episode. If you enjoyed what you heard, please like, comment, and leave a rating.

1:24:34Robert Mays: We'll see you next time.

1:25:03Robert Mays: Transcription by CastingWords discover.com slash credit card.