2023-2024 NFL Season Thread • Page 2620

At least you'd have receivers that can catch minshews hospital balls

 

Tbf I thought Chase was opening up Jefferson which was 100% true

What we didn't realize is that it didn't matter

 

Jeremy Chinn for the 2 good years

 

I specifically remember a time we were watching LSU go nuts in our Atlanta apartment, and i told Matt "I think Justin Jefferson is better than Ja'Marr Chase tbh" and he gave me the most Ron Swanson displeased face as he shook his head vehemently in response lol

 

Would people still "yeah but" for Trey Lance if the Jaguars were the ones who picked him? I wonder

But also you'd probably never have Urban Meyer so that's a plus

 

To be fair though, I am a little biased toward the "big receiver" skillset, and I am wrong about that sometimes.

 

Jefferson was just like, how is this absolute DAWG at the catch point, also so agile that he can be a slot receiver? That combo is RARE and he runs the more complete route tree of the two of them because of his role, so he knows how to get open all over the damn field. Chase is one of the best pure X receivers we've ever seen, but like with other X receivers, he can be limited to catching 5 balls for 40 yards underneath and you can force Burrow to throw elsewhere if you really put emphasis on keeping safety help over the top. Jefferson's amazing versatility makes it impossible to simply take away the left third of the field and expect that to slow him down.

I watched youtube clips of him being filmed in offseason training etc, and the amount of ways he knew how to set corners up at the line of scrimmage with a release was bonkers to me. Some WR (like Davante Adams) thrive off making their release look exactly the same every time no matter what route, and that's cool too - but I loved that Jefferson's style was the polar opposite of that, he could improvise 80 different ways to fool the corner and they never knew what kind of hesitation or jab step was coming. It's really like he's playing basketball.

ALL of that has translated very well to his explosive first couple years in the NFL. Jefferson is a wildly good route runner but he also plays like he's 6'4" 230. Love him.

 

There was a player holding back LSU's offense but it was Terrace Marshall being useless in the slot to the point that people (not me) thought JJ was purely a slot receiver. I loved JJ but overcorrected on what I felt was bias and ranked him lower than I should've.

 

Just stop chasing a type. Happens so often on draft twitter everyone wants to make the 6'5" guy who ran a 4.38 or the 220lb YAC guy into the next big thing.

 

One QB who can read a defense please

 

I more so make my judgments on the field though, the Combine only exists to confirm or deny suspicions I already have from the tape

Example: Always liked AJ Brown more than DK Metcalf, Metcalf SHOCKED me at the Combine but I still held firm that AJ was WR1 at Ole Miss and was gonna be the better NFL player

 

I thought JJ was bigger than he is because of how he played actually lol

 

i don't know what that has to do with what i said. i'm just saying judge players for what they do not what you want.

 

i figured you knew cause you said "bigger receivers"

 

There's definitely merit to what you're saying, I would just add the caveat that variety of skillsets is the best way to attack a defense, so I am gonna focus more on what I want when the team lacks that thing

I don't think a receiver is less good because he's not big and not a dawg at the catch point, but I am going to weigh the bigger dawg at the catch point heavier for the Jags just because we already have guys who can do the other stuff - but as of right now, Engram is our only possession guy and we basically only throw laterally to him this season.

 

If a team relies mostly on slow possession receivers, then the elusive route runner whose style is making space for wide open catches makes more sense for them 100%

 

@CarpetElf also I'd like to address this - there's a limit and my opinion does have nuance to it lol. Sometimes talent is just talent and that's that. Quentin Johnson was always gonna be bad and I absolutely did not value him on the same level as guys like Jordan Addison just because he was the only big guy projected early

Also was not a huge fan of Kelvin Benjamin... He actually fared better than I thought he would by having at least 2 useful seasons of being Cam's kinda-WR1 lol

 

I was definitely high on Benjamin but part of that was I didn't like Winston and thought it was maybe a Manziel-Evans situation

 

I didn’t like Winston or Benjamin

 

Combine is great as confirmation for things like that Benjamin is big but slow

 

In fairness, thinking Ceedee Lamb > JJ isn't that embarrassing. It may even be right. Lamb has been nasty this year.

 

So you're saying it's taken Lamb this long to put up the kind of numbers JJ has already put up since his rookie year?

Nah I'm just being feisty, it was definitely a fair opinion, Lamb was a DAWG in college & actually it was a little underwhelming to me that he wasn't dominant right away in the NFL. I thought he would be.

 

Yeah I thought he’d be more immediate too

 

The 2020 draft was a bad one rankings-wise for me

I was in on Jefferson, Aiyuk and Pittman, out (relatively speaking) on Reagor and Ruggs

but also I got ClayFOOLED (and also thought Denzel Mims >> Tee Higgins)

 

Everyone got clayfooled