The ideal way to build a WR room in 2026

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 2020-60s is going to look like, but a couple more and deeper offseason shows before we get to those sorts of discussions. 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 as you if you 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 have 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. 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. 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. 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. Limits it. Limits it 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. So it just makes sense from a content perspective. Yeah, keep me in that box as much as possible. Just to let people behind the curtain a little bit, essentially what happens in the offseason is either right before the draft happens 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 heated in the depths of the offseason and a lot of the shows are once 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 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. 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. I definitely said this a lot leading into last off season where the way that teams have now condensed things so much, whether it is those condensed formations, cuts, splits, everything like that. It's almost giving me a little bit of like an existential crisis with how I chart and collect like like pre-snap data for players because it's just so dramatically different. I was looking at this today reading headlines about you know, Teter O'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. 117. 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. I assume he has 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 linemen or anything. But the like when 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. It'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 average 84 yards per game. No other receiver under 17 as 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 what 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. Because I don't think you'll ever fully capture the picture of this stuff with just individual charting data. I think you have to really dive into it more from a nuanced standpoint. Yeah, I 100% agree. And I was thinking about this when I was doing some research about we talk about Jack Besh on the scheme change all-star show just in terms of like guys that are going to be now you're now you're now you're talking my music your Jack Besh. It was I made the giant. I know you've done this too. This obviously I made the joke with 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 we 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 next gen and though which some of you should say this like can I figure out can you give me a stat about a player's distance from the ball. 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 like what we're trying to do here. But I think the broader point here is that there's 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 XZ 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 they've just the teams have just become so good at blurring the line pre and post snap and obviously motion is a big part of this to go back to the Teterot McMillan example. You know nobody is looking at Jimmy Horn Jr. and thinking like he's an important part of the Panthers offense you know 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 like 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 receiver is it's 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 opened up like the body types for players that can do different things so when we get into kind of an 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 more more open world than we were both like literally and figuratively in a much more open world right now than we probably were certainly 10 years ago I would even say five years ago. And when I 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 the 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 Pukinakua Alonassane 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 X receivers yeah right before it's okay how can we find an a-lead and X 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 Pukinakua or even an Amun Ross aim proud? I think Jackson's with the Jigba 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's a little bit something different than those two. And even, and even Pukin 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 on the double. 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 extra receiver. He was the guy that, and we'll get into this at some point. I kind of think the sacrificial extra receiver bit has jumped the shark, but we'll come back to that. I'm sure at a different point, but not even like a sacrificial play. There's a true extra receiver who beats press man 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 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 it. 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 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. So yeah, to me, I think they kind of had a perfect of 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 cold soft fence. 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 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. 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 1415. Since they didn't have that, you kind of need that at the tight end position. 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. So let's take this into 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 of pieces of our passing game. Do we not? Yes. And then at that point, like 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. And I think to me, if we're going to have the Jamar Chase, if we're going to have the Justin Jefferson, 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 and 80% of his snaps 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. And 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 cold-sish type room this year where they have a perfect X. They have a big body Z receiver in Jaden Higgins. So 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, no, I really, really like Jalen, no, is 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 they, 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 and 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. So 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 Jammar 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, anything like that. But he's so for 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. 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 this 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, well, and maybe that's maybe that's even a little bit too late. Cause 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%. And sometimes that happened. Sometimes it didn't. So 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 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 been and even Jefferson kind of on a couple of shows, set it and I read 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, he's 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% or bring down his rate of extra Cver snaps 10 percentage points or something like that, that makes a pretty significant difference to the overall potency of the offense. 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 Tadaroa Mcmillan example we were just using at the beginning? You know, this was something of 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 and I mean like especially in the way that we're dealing with defensive coverage is now where there 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 to 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 is opposed to if you're moving that guy around is more difficult to double him. I 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 and zone coverage and everything, but it's a lot. It's a lot easier when the guys 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 for the whole situation for a player to just get those layups in. And then 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. And 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 a Jamar chase or just a 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 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 league and 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 extra-ceiver body and really jack up the potency and efficiency of that individual player. So he was a good example of this very fast. I say to see what he looks like in a new offense. Sometimes you get these slight nagging concerns in the back of your head. That's like something that 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. 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 really shifted based on who the quarterback is like in 2024. And I think these are the two best seasons to kind of use for him because it's the same offensive coordinator and everything like that. He ran a crawl route on 16% of the routes. I charted that year. This past season with primarily Michael Pentax under center, it was up to like 22%. You know, so 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 in 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. So I think they'll probably want to make a book of it this year, which that's going to be a huge welcome change for him. Like when we, I think we, when do we last have that conversation about like the changing archetype of wide receivers? I think that was when a book was really crushing it. He was right. It was like five weeks into the year. 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 if maybe not we also I'm sure I said that on the show did not age well. Because 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 as courier has gone on. He's also coming off a major injury doesn't look like himself. And the other receivers like, Tess Johnson, who probably weighs less than you and Sterling Shepherd, like I mean, and it is Sterling Shepherd 10 years into his NFL career. So I mean, yeah, you're going to end up playing a mecca Buka as a vertical extra 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, you know, 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, you know, off the ball and everything, you're going to just bring them into the quarter back'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 quarterbacks 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. There are another really fast 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 the first so their first pick last year. Wonder how often we talked 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 Von Daegg, 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 prior maximized in the right deployments, the cardinals over the last couple 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 I'm on Rossane Brown and Nico Collins are going to be like close together. And what the hell is the point of comparing those two players based on like with the strengths of their game? You sit down and watch, which is obviously what I do. You still don't watch eight games of I'm on Rossane Brown and eight games of Nico Collins. You can 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 your point that way where a guy's can just be completely 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 things you said there that I think is something I think about a lot is we're projecting receivers going to the season and go back to that cults example. When you're run in white hot and you're run in pure and this example maybe isn't perfect because the cults obviously did fall off in the back half of the year. When you're run in white hot and you're running pure, I do think like that's when the ex-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 easy answer like the slot guy to just keep the offense on schedule, especially if your run game isn't very good. And again, so when you're running the ball well, your offensive line is awesome. Like 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 ex-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. I don't think it's necessarily causal in 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. We're like, I'm trying to think about 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 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. 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 don'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. We 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's some guys that just will never end up being fully maximized from a production standpoint because 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, okay, 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, like, I think there was clearly so much more meat on the bone there. It wasn't like their first problem was not that we'll Drake London takes too many snaps at X receiver. They had a lot of other issues in those two years with Drake London there, 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 shutters falling off like your receiver is not quite in the right role. There's probably something else going on there. Yeah, I think that's the first place to start because I think when you see an offensive load in on itself, protection is the first place that it happens. I'm thinking about like the worst examples in recent memory, like the certain versions of the Texans, the Raiders offense last year, the cults, the last Frank great cults team, like every single one of those teams, the, the collapse starts with protection, but the receiver usage is usually correlated with that. Another thing that was just the fine, the one and only year of Ryan Grubb with the Seattle C-Hawks. Yeah. They took forever to get to like, we should probably make Jackson's fifth in jib with a featured receiver, but that wasn't their biggest problem. Their biggest problem is their protection rules were completely a mess. But there was something like that. 95% of the time asking their offensive lineman who were not great to block. Yeah. Good last 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 it at an extremely high level as opposed to the other way around. I will talk about guys like that in a second, but first, first, first, quick break. All right. So let's, let's start with a guy that you can build the whole offense around. Like I think the JSN is, you're probably right in the sense that like at this point, I don't even mean this is 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 in at that point in time, bucketing him with Puka and Amin Ross and Brown made sense now, like what JSN is and the averticality to his game and the explosiveness, he is a little bit of a different player than those two guys. 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 complimentary skill sets that you have to put around that type of player? Yeah, I do think you want, if we're going to, 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. You also therefore need another guy. I'd prefer it to be a bigger, you know, body player. I think the Vikings have Jordan Addison and he can do some of this stuff, but he's, he's just, it's just some limitations there as where he's more of that, like just true number two is opposed to like, is he more of a one B, which essentially is just a fancy way of saying a number two receiver, but it's his helps us categorize these things. You want that player to be a 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're, 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. It might be less important, maybe, maybe than it was certainly five or 10 years ago, whatever, but it's still number one, the best player isolating metric that we have. Yes. In my opinion, too, not 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. So 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 again a lot line up on the perimeter and, you know, win at all three levels. That's that's like 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. Is that number two person there? Well, 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, especially when your quarterback is good, especially in those cases, then it becomes a we're going to make it those guys beat us. And that's why you see the chiefs in the bills last year. You don't play against more man coverage and 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 till it is your ability to be man coverage over all of us in offense. And again, this is a tough thing where I'm going to and I'm definitely lower than consensus certainly relative to like people in the fantasy industry alongside me on a guy like Rishi Rice because there's nothing wrong with the fact that Rishi Rice does not beat man coverage. Like the fact that he's just really strong zone beater. He wins with the ball in his hands and he brings a lot of physicality when he's a run up to 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 and now that guys your feature player. Well, 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 man coverage rates go up critical down to distance situations in the red zone. It's like, yeah, those are those are pretty important down. So that's neat. We can get the five yards against zone coverage on first down. What about on third and six and everything like that when you start to get behind the sticks and all that. So yeah, to me, I think that's like if you're 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 extra seaver body type. You know, the guy that this kind of clicked for me wait, 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's mishuster when he was with the Steelers. It's like, well, yeah, he's putting up a lot of great production, but the offense is going to go 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 yeah, 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 I'm on Rossane 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 extra seaver 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 the team in the situation that really eliminated 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 brand and I you could be both Samuel Niners. Like that that to me is like the best like what 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 happen last year to the Niners, but they kind of had to cobble together like what they were hoping brand and I you could come back to be with Jawan Jennings and Ricky Pierceau, which are you know two quality players with in their own right. But neither one of them can do the things that Evans is going to do for them this year that I you did for them at his at the peak of his powers like. Yeah, again, that's a great I use a great point of this and it's like almost sad to talk about at this point because nobody was higher on Brandon I you before and during his ascension in 2023 than me. We were in the boat together, buddy. I was so big, big Brandon I you 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. Then I have like a new dynasty rankings tool on reception perception. Nothing is more depressing whenever I opened up and like do the update there like. All right, so how much further are we dropping at you this time? Like we're 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 it you know, it goes to like historically good 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 I you can 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 extra-ceiver bit has kind of jumped the shark and that all like being an extra-ceiver is not good. Like we don't want to, you don't want to receive it 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. When you talk about those complimentary like number two guys who have a varied skill set and do a little bit of everything on ball off ball, who are the guys that come to mind for you that you feel like, capable, 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. I kind of think Quentin Johnson has become that guy. Interesting. And he's okay. In a way, like he's not this weak and you we get a move. I think there's a there's a world where Quentin Johnson, if you used him like a, I don't know, like not like Rishi Rice, because it's just so limited. Rice has 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 James and Williams, like guys, guys like that in the way that they were used last year. Especially. Oh man, put a pin in the Lions thing because I want to come back to them in a second. But but yes, like that's a good Christian Watts is a good example where he does play a lot outside, but he is so detachees in motion. You're running him on these big breaking routes and everything like that. Yeah, that's a that's a good way of putting it. But he is still Quentin Johnson, at least in the old offense with Greg Roman, still primarily an extra seaver. So he wasn't really used in this way. I mean, they definitely spit the ball at 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 personal packages as a Louis like expect the charges to do, I think Quentin Johnson is is a good fit in that offense in that way. And he allows you because he can credibly be now, not like a great down field receiver. He's always going to have some issues at the catchpoint, but 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 Johnson's best routes are, if you look at his like route success rate chart in reception perception, and you map that on to like what Jaylin Waddle was asked to do for the dolphins. It's actually pretty perfect, which I think means Waddle was not maximized. I think you will be maximized in Denver, but it also means that I think like that's going to credibly be the role that Johnson takes to allow them to do all the fun and move around stuff with Latmacaque. How do you think this 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 that. I think it debt. Well, it definitely changes like what a slot receiver is. And I mean, I think we're almost seeing like the traditional slot receiver kind of die the last two years, like go away, like those players just aren't as relevant anymore, which I think means that you still to me, it's then on the play collar to find like creative ways to allow a guy like Josh Downs to be used in two receivers. I just 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 three or one. 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 pierces, the extra zebra and downs and 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. So yeah, that's definitely part of the story. But I think the main impact of all this heavy personnel, you know, usage and last year and probably this year as well, it just consolidates things around the number one receiver so much. Like this is what what typically what we see happen when teams get into these heavy personnel looks is you see the efficiency and the per, you know, 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 in 11 personnel and everything like that. So 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 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, face it 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 surest 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. And 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. And obviously even digs never had the season that digs never the offensive player of the new. No, no, much to my chagrin. But yeah, no, I mean, digs is like the original reception. No, I mean, it was 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 it in a circle Hall of Fame, he's up there. So, 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, 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. And even yes, beating man coverage on the perimeter, different the beating man coverage in the slot. We're still talking about translatable skills here. So anyways, my point 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 you have a 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 the big more tight ends and all these heavy personnel packages. It'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 bad ass 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. The JSN emergence, I think driven in large part, not in large part, but driven in part by the way the league is shifted. We're going to say one more quick break and then when I come back and chat about a few more of the elements that have shifted as we've seen some evolution offensively in the league. All right. So as we've gotten to the place we're in now, whether it's condensed formations, heavier personnel, whatever, whatever, however you want to describe the offensive meta in the NFL is 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. I 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, this comes back to Cooper Cup with the Rams and maybe even St. Brown in certain ways too. I think maybe St. Brown's a little bit different. But Cooper Cup is bigger than you think he is, right? So over 200 pounds, over six feet. I think 10 years ago that guy gets looked at and it's like, well, that's our big body extraceiver, whatever. But now 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 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 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, you know, what your body can handle. Like I love Lad Mcconkey, 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 on three receivers sets because he's like this guy, but that's never been the case for Zay. He's never been a, and I this kind of, it crystallizes for me randomly because I'm kind of in my own little bubble with how I think about receivers at times, but thank God for YouTube comments. That's first time anyone's going to say that in history because it opens you up to a wider dialogue of what people think about players. And I remember I put out a video of like my kind of pet theory that I think could based on all that we're talking about here that I think Elijah Sarad is like the perfect guy to go from a collegiate perimeter receiver and kick inside based on like his reception, perception profile and his charting data. I love that there's already been some kind of talk about that from Eric DeCosta 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? But it's like Zay flowers has never been never been a star receiver. Yeah. It's never the star is here for the Ravens people to think that because he's five nine, a hundred eighty five pounds or whatever. So I think the other part of this is also the Ravens never had a slot receiver. The Ravens are playing 10% 11% for most of his career. Oh yeah, trust me when I was looking up the, the, the, the lowest slot rates that we were talking about earlier with George Pickens and Teterot McMillan. There's a, you know, my therapist has let me talk about Rashad Baitman anymore, but I did notice that there's like three Rashad Baitman, no slot usage seasons in the, in the bottom 10 over the last three years. But anyways, yeah, no, I think that the body type thing really to me has been the thing that's changed the most in terms of the last like four or five years or so when we've, when'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 comments 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 he theoretically moves. And it's like, oh yeah, that's an extra 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. We're 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 wrote a piece for RP this during the draft season. Did a YouTube breakdown on it for the folks that don't like to read as well. Where 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 and at least two of the three man's own press coverage. So 45 players, 42% of them were cut on the 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 the 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. All 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? You 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. J. Megan Higgins. If you make him, they make him, J. Megan 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. It's 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 foot four and two 15 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 fan bases as well. Like I think to me, I like, I mean, to talk about your bears for a second here. I mean, I think like Ben Johnson, 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 in the actress, he or bucket. I mean, nobody was in those buckets last year, especially like that's not what those players are. And that's how it those players should be. No, exactly. So I think like that just again, the blurring aligns there. It's like, yeah, can a dunes a B a Z receiver even if he looks like a classic X yes, can burden B 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 Z flowers is 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 types 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. I 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 form into the field, being able to know like where people are after the catch, I think 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 of 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 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 given these opportunities consistently getting four or five more yards than the play originally would be designed to get 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 Besh 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 day three receivers 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 is a you know raw prospect out of the Lune Tunes offense in Tennessee. But then even then like Jack Besh got on the field like he's the extra 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 Cooper Cup had one of the best wide receivers or seasons we have ever seen. But I think I think I think that 100% I'm on Rossing Brown. What could you have been Jack Besh be gone to the wrong team. 100% I think that those guys obviously became better than just same brown especially became much much better than just like what this is where it's annoying when people say oh he compares to I'm on Rossing Brown. Tell what I'm on Rossing Brown. Are you talking about are you talking about like the back half is rookie season you told me this last year. But anyways my point is saying that is you got to get 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 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 100% because he's a power player and I think has that awareness with the ball in his hands. 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 I think there's there's going to need to be a necessary projection of the right deployment of him to see the best version of him. And that's there's always going to be a little opacity and how that process goes. Like it's going to 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 see 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 carver situations. 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 pitman, a 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. That's an aside, but like just I just he's the type of player we're 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, you're 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 trailing bricks in the 2022 draft class. There are people that love trailing bricks. I to me was look, look, I'm not I'm not pat myself on the back here because I like John Dotson and I still have a little candle lit for John. I was about to say you still give it up on your hot dot sense. It don't pretend like that door is closed. No, that's just a little candle lit, you know, like the I got a pull under the couch cushion. There the stock is hidden under there somewhere. But I also did just I probably just talk more I tweet. I definitely tweet more about the players I was wrong about. The players I was right about because the internet is for having fun and making fun of yourself. But whole separate conversation. Anyways, but that in that draft class like trailing bricks to me like, you could never get him into the same tier, even close to guys like Alave Wilson, London, even Jamison Williams, because he was going to take the right deployment and the right coaching staff. And I don't think I don't think Mike Ravel 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 extra receiver. And that went about and went up 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 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 extra receiver reps just so we can move Nico Collins around. But yeah, it's a but it's the same time. Like even if he's like a 30% extra receiver as opposed to an 80% or 70%. We flipped those ratios a little that that makes a huge difference to these guys. So 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 onto these convictions kind of loosely with with these individual players. Two more things. I want to talk about the groups that you feel like are really well composed and that like hit your brain into 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 like 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 jail and no, 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 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. This there were 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. I would say it like Tyler Boyd, right, 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 like the cheese needed, which is why Rashid Rice has been part of targets because they have the lowest explosive rush rate by a good bit the last two years. But like the you know, 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 receive slot receivers in the league right now when we're finding more explosive plays 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 Noel type of guy being like a big post route player and everything like that. But 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. It was not I did makes me so happy to even think about it. It's just like closing 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 come back 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 Jalen Noel a Josh downs a J and read B. That designated players were you know, Rip and play action shots off of a rip and shots off play action to these guys on the outcuts and everything. So I think that's something I'm watching this year is can these receivers be access more outside the numbers because we're still looking to find explosive plays in those in those areas. You know, you're like the whole shots against cover two and everything like that. 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 again, certain coverages more of those outcuts as well. So 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, you know, I think when you're saying guys that you to you are like those on ball off ball, a little bit of everything type players that like are these complimentary number two's like he's the type of guy that comes to mind for me. Like I think that he's somebody that he can do a little bit of everything despite the fact that he is a little bit under size and maybe we put him into his box because of that. You know, he's bigger. I think than than you think like he's awesome contested catch player like he's so physical at the catchpoint. Yeah, he like from a separation standpoint, he's like okay, he's good. He's like above average, but he's not going to be like a Josh down type of receiver or anything like that. But 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 Shreger today. And yeah, he talked about like 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 like Bud Light golden tape coming into the NFL Parker Washington. But now he just kind of like is golden tape and I'm not talking about golden tape in John, Jim Bobcooters like popgun offense with the Detroit lines. I'm talking about like with the Seattle Seahawks where he was this ball winner or more vertical guy. So yeah, that's the type of player. I think that's more eligible now to be your slot option. Then probably, you know, three or 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 feel constructed in a way where it all fits together in the right way. You mentioned the cult that to me, that's the best possible example is like what the 2025 cults look like. Who are the other teams in your mind where it's just like I like this. You don't have Jamar chase or Justin Jefferson necessarily, but the way that you put this group together. I think that you're you're thinking about it in the right way. Texans, I mentioned, even if I would be more flexible with like the alignment for my number one guy in that situation, which is Nico Collins. I do think like they put together the room really well with three complimentary skill sets for sure. I kind of think the jets have weirdly as well. If you know, I don't know what's all going to work out. I know you're like an 80 Mitchell guy. So 80 Mitchell kind of is like a you know, he's an extroceiver man. I actually don't he's one of the few players. I jumped with this with James co and we were talking about 80, 80 Mitchell after his rookie year. Nine times at a tenant. I've done 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. Baltimore 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 extroceiver. 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 case scenario for him is like the exact I you profile that we were talking about from like 2023. Like it's like. Yeah. He's not going to get there. Like I don't think I think yeah. Of course, even if I still believe in 80 Mitchell. I don't think he ever becomes 2023 bread and I you could put 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 100% 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 outcomes. I didn't interview with him before the draft and, you know, after Actually during the show he asked like I was talking about like what's his best route and he was talking about these outcomes. 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 got to spit the ball at somebody and hope they create after to the catch. Well, he could definitely do that. So he's that's what's the deep can be, right? I mean, it's 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 accounts for Drake London, because I think he's the past game coordinator now in Atlanta is Tanner angstrand. But anyways, like he was the movement guy where they do so much were Aryan Smith. I, I, I, I swear to God, I think they drafted Aryan Smith in the fourth round at the Jets last year, just so he could do that Jimmy Horn Jr. stuff I was talking about. We're like, wins for me. The sacrificial runoff, like wins, not the sacrificial X, but like the sacrificial, I don't know, slot, you know, like, what Khalif Raymond is probably going to be for the Bears this year, but they hope Xavier and Thomas is going to be this year or down the line for the Bears. Like, 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. The team out there 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 talk about, I'm in wrestling Brown is like, 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. Russet Brown is. But I think when you look at what Tesla is supposed to be within that offense to compliment the players there already have, that makes sense to me. And then the Jamison 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 for in the NFL at receiver. Now with the way the 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 number 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 place. 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 what 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 lines. I said, put a pin in that. 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 traded 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 lines 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 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 same brown like it's not going to be what he is. But same brown last year took fewer snaps in the slot on the on a percentage basis than he ever has in any point during his NFL career. Part of that is, you know, just naturally 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 league. But a lot of that also was because Tesla was able to take in the games I tried to for him. He was outside on 69% of his snaps. And but he was off the line of scrimmage at like a 55 45 split. So like he allowed them to get the best out of St. Brown and allowed him to play more outside. But also allowed James Williams to take fewer snaps on the line of scrimmage because James Williams good player in like an ideal world. You don't necessarily want him to run out as your extra receiver. A ton, but he has to because St. Brown, you know, you got your your roll and I don't say roll catering as like an insult, but you're roll catering to Amon Ross St. Brown because he's awesome. And you're putting him in the best position he's exceed. So like, they're a little bit of diminishing returns for Jamo 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 James 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 outrun players in the over the course of his career. Who cares? Because even what he does from like a formation standpoint allows them to just again get get James Williams off of the ball so he can run these big in cuts. Like you said, stretch the field horizontally. I think Denver this year Pat Brian is going to be that guy is like the big burly slot on ball option. Courtman Sutton's your ex. Jalen Wattles 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. The key is going to have a monster season in that offense. I could not be more excited about what Jalen Wattles going to do because he's going to beat 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 Xavier Thomas to do this stuff? If you if Ben Johnson wants to do it, he can do it every once but like I almost like he wants to do it. He can do whatever he wants. If he wants I said this on our draft show is like, yeah, he has is 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 Roush, the Xavier Thomas, whatever. Let him do whatever he wants. Who cares? Anyways, I 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 status 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 critical. So yeah, I spend like an in order amount of time thinking about like the Xavier Thomas is a cliff rayman's going to be the guy that this year is funny. How could last year, you know, Ben Johnson's like, well, let me get a lot of days to key is like Devon Doverney. I got to find myself a cliff rayman. Now he just like, I'll just go get the real thing and then a younger version of it. Again, biblical greed. But like an in order amount of time thinking about like what Xavier Thomas is going to do for the Bears in that way. What test blood does for the Lions? What Pat Bryant does for the Denver Broncos? So 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. The test lot points, 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. That's how I think about the Lions where it's like, I don't really care like if he's the extra seaver all the time. I just want that like big ball-winning presence within my offense that to me compliments the other players that I have. 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 are 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 as the league right now is obsessed with the the heavy personnel stuff because that that's the current trend or is last year's trend like what's the next thing? I've thoughtable 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 at an empty in 2024 and he was freaking benched that year. Last year drops down to 88 because I think they got bigger and heavier and all that stuff. Now they have Teteromic Millen who they're saying can play all over the place I agree 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. He is a power slot but he's also a good man coverage receiver so he allows him to do so and they go and get Chris Brazill 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 Brazill over the weekend 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 games. Our guys are all big and like Coker probably is like the best blocker of the group but like give some effort as blockers all of these guys so 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 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 reception perception.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 diner, it's Dynasty Rankings tool in addition to all the profiles I've always written up for that site since its inception. So still have player updates coming every single week now at this point, leading up to the NFL season. So lot going on there. And of course, over at Yahoo, the Yahoo Fantasy forecast, we ramp up to five days a week in August because Man Week 1 is rapidly approaching faster than we could ever imagine here. So we'll be up to daily there. And we've got a great new crew with Josh and Hayden joining this year as well. So all sometimes the Yahoo could not be more excited about the season. - 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 off the road training camp. And so you guys are in my years 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. Talked to this, actually talking about puzzle pieces fitting together. 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. Thank you guys, 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. We'll see you next time.