How good can Tee Higgins be?

[PDub80]

(04-13-2021, 11:35 AM)BayTiger Wrote: Is WR separation discussed outside the internet and the media? I find it hard to believe that coaches gameplan around a stat that ranks Cole Beasley as the fifth best receiver in the NFL. If you go by average separation Tee Higgins is as good as Amari Cooper. Danny Amendola has higher average separation than DeAndre Hopkins, Stefan Diggs, and Davante Adams. Tyler Boyd gets more separation than DK Metcalf.

The best receivers are middle of the pack in separation because they don't need 3 yards of separation to be open. You don't throw to Alex Erickson when you need to complete a jump ball on the sideline to move the chains. You throw to Tee Higgins. Erickson doesn't catch the ball unless he's wide open with 3+ yards of separation. 

The NFL has GPS trackers on every player during games tracking this stuff. So, yes.

And the quick slot guys are going to have better SEO/SOE numbers. So are tight ends. I linked an article in response to another post regarding this all being broken down. It's really interesting and they touch on what you are asking as well as correlate a lot of things. I will leave it here as well: https://www.google.com/amp/s/fivethirtyeight.com/features/our-new-metric-shows-how-good-nfl-receivers-are-at-creating-separation/amp/

Someone brought up Drew Sample having high SEP. That is good! But, to compare that to Deandre Hopkins makes no sense since they run routes and match up against different guys. Hopkins, fir example, is covered by the other team's best CBs while TEs get LBs, nickle guys, etc. and they are finding holes in zone coverages as well. Different routes, different guys coving routes, etc.

This is why AJ Green's 1.7 SEP number vs Hopkins 3.0 last year shows what a dumpster fire the Bengals have at WR as a group. This all came about at people clutching at their pearls, appalled that the Bengals may go WR at 5 in the draft with 1 guy, Chase, clearly the best guy... while, in contrast, there are something like, 19 or 13 or 16 or whatever O linemen rated in the top 50 prospects this year.