Slot Receiver Vs Tight End
The NFL draft is perhaps the world’s longest, and most bizarre, job application process.
NFL’s Next Gen Stats captures real time location data, speed and acceleration for every player, every play on every inch of the field. Discover Next Gen Stats News, Charts, and Statistics. The slot is simply the area between the end of the offensive line (or tight end) and the farthest wide receiver. Slot receivers tend to be smaller and run shorter routes, often moving inside or outside as a secondary passing option or as a decoy to open up the outside receivers downfield. As mentioned above, the slot receiver is a receiver who is between the nearest player on the line of scrimmage (Tackle or Tight End) and an outside receiver. The slot receiver was made prominent in pass-heavy offenses such as West Coast systems. Tight ends spent significantly more time split out as wide receivers than running backs did in 2019. Eighteen tight ends saw at least half of their targets from the slot, and seven more saw at least a tenth of their targets split out wide. The slotback requires a versitile player, who must combine the receiving skills of a wide receiver, the ball-carrying skills of a running back, and the blocking skills of a tight end. A similarly named position is the slot receiver, who is the third wide receiver in a 3-receiver set, the one who lines up between the outermost receiver and the.
Over the course of a few months NFL hopefuls will have their lives picked apart by a small group of individuals who hold in their hands the keys to the proverbial castle. Every aspect of their lives are examined. Their best moments. Their worst. With more “applicants” than jobs available, teams are sometimes forced to make difficult decisions, and that leaves incredibly talented applicants on the outside looking in when the final decisions are made.
Think about the last time you applied for a job. What you put on your resume to separate yourselves from the rest of the applicants. The things you said during the interview to make you a more attractive candidate. With such a high level of competition, every little thing you can do to make yourself stand out can mean the different between starting a new gig, or looking for another shot.
Now think about this year’s wide receiver draft class. Many consider it to be a “historic” group of talent. Daniel Jeremiah, the top draft analyst for the NFL Network, declared before the scouting combine that he had 27 players with a Day 1 or Day 2 grade on his overall board at the wide receiver position.
Slot Receiver Vs Tight Ends
I’ve got 27 wide receivers with top 3-round grades in this draft. And consider average 31 are taken. We had a max of 35 taken in, I believe that was in 2017. So this is a really phenomenal group of wideouts. Not all those guys are going to go early. They’ll end up spreading throughout the draft. But it’s really a good group.
With such a deep candidate pool, how does one stand out? Conversely, what might cause a candidate to slide?
That brings us to Justin Jefferson.
The LSU wideout put up impressive numbers for the Tigers last season during their run to a National Championship. He also was one of the best performers at the Scouting Combine, as his 4.43 40-yard dash was a bit unexpected, but showed that he has the long speed to function at a high level in the NFL. Yet there are many who express reservations about him.
The main reservation for many? A matter of potential usage in the NFL, and the notion this his skill set is a bit more limited than some of the other options in the draft. His huge numbers last season might be due to the fact that he operated nearly exclusively out of the slot. Jefferson, according to charting data from Pro Football Focus, played 870 snaps last year from a slot alignment.
Slot Receiver Vs Tight End Position
Just five of those were on the outside.
While 11 offensive personnel (three wide receivers, one tight end and one running back) has become a base personnel package for the majority of NFL teams, making slot receiver a starting position, how that spot is used functionally makes it a bit of an easier position to play. The slot receiver gets the benefit of pre-snap movement, making it easier to avoid press coverage off the line of scrimmage. Additionally, the slot receiver has a “two-way go” off the release, giving the cornerback more to think about. Slot receivers, thanks to their alignment on the field, can run routes breaking both inside and outside.
Boundary receivers, however, are limited with what they can do working towards the outside. On routes where they break towards the sideline, they either have to cheat their alignment towards the middle of the field pre-snap (perhaps indicating to the CB what they are doing) or create space with their route, perhaps by stemming inside first and then breaking outside.
Therefore, receivers with a proven track record of playing outside, and beating press coverage, might be more valuable commodities. If it is harder to find that type of player, teams will be willing to pay a premium for them in terms of draft capital, and wait to draft players whose job might be easier in the league.
In the 2019 regular and postseason, per Pro Football Focus data, slot receivers regardless of position (receivers, running backs, and tight ends) accounted for 32% of all targets, 31.6% of all receptions, 32.3% of all receiving yardage, and 34.3% of all receiving touchdowns. In a league where the three-receiver set is by far the default formation (it happened on 69% of all snaps last season, per Sports Info Solutions), having a versatile and productive slot receiver is an absolute necessity in the modern passing game.
Moreover, there is no one kind of slot receiver in the modern NFL. It used to be that you wanted the shorter, smaller guy inside, and your bigger, more physical receivers on the outside. Then, offensive coaches started to realize that by putting bigger receivers and tight ends in the slot, you could create mismatches with slower linebackers and smaller slot cornerbacks. Teams countered this by acquiring linebackers built like safeties, eager to do more than just chase after run fits, and also by moving their best cornerbacks into the slot in certain situations.
Now that offensive and defensive coaches have worked hard to create as many schematic and personnel ties in the slot as possible, the best slot receivers are the ones who consistently show the ideal characteristics for the position. These receivers know how to exploit defenders who don’t have a boundary to help them — they’ll create inside and outside position to move the defender where they want him to go. They understand the value and precision of the option route, and how you can hang a defender out to dry with a simple “if this/then that” equation based on coverage rules. They know how to work in concert with their outside receivers to create route combinations which create impossible math problems for defenses. And they know how to get open in quick spaces.
But don’t automatically assume that slot receivers are just taking the dink-and-dunk routes — they’re actually tasked to catch everything from quick slants to vertical stuff down the seam and up the numbers. Last season, per PFF data, the NFL average for yards per completion for outside receivers was 11.28. For slot receivers, it was 11.63. So, over time and based on the play design and the makeup of the receivers, teams could find just that many more yards by throwing to their slot targets.
The best slot receivers in the game bring unique and highly valuable traits to the game, and here are the best among them.
More Top 11 lists: Slot defenders Outside cornerbacks Safeties Linebackers Edge defenders Interior defensive linemen Offensive tackles Offensive guards Centers Outside Receivers
Honorable Mentions
Had we dropped the qualifying floor to under 50% slot snaps, two guys would have easily made it — Tampa Bay’s Mike Evans, and Baltimore’s Marquise Goodwin. Evans led all slot receivers with at least 25 targets with a passer rating when targeted of 151.3, and Brown was an absolute force against defenses in the slot — especially when he was using his speed in empty formations.
San Francisco’s Deebo Samuel, who was probably the MVP of the first half of Super Bowl LIV before things started to go backward for his team, would have received a mention as well — Samuel had just 33 targets, but caught 28 of them and helped his quarterback to a 135.3 rating when he was targeted in the slot. Kansas City speed receiver Mecole Hardman had just 23 a lot targets, but he was also highly efficient with them, helping his quarterbacks to a 133.9 rating. Though Danny Amendola was the only Lions receiver to make the 50% threshold, both Marvin Jones and Kenny Golladay were highly efficient when tasked to move inside. Other former slot stars like Tyreek Hill of the Chiefs and Minnesota’s Adam Thielen saw their roles change more to the outside in 2019 from previous seasons.
Of the receivers who actually qualified, Nelson Agholor of the Eagles was quietly efficient and had just two drops in the slot last season — which would go against several memes on the subject. Buffalo’s Cole Beasley just missed the cut, through he was one of several receivers on the Bills’ roster who didn’t always get the accuracy and efficiency they deserved from quarterback Josh Allen. And though Randall Cobb was productive for the Cowboys last season and should be so for the Texans in 2020, his nine drops as a slot man… well, we can only have one guy with nine slot drops on this list. More on that in a minute.
Now, on to the top 11.
Willie Snead IV Julian Edelman Tyler Boyd Jared Cook Golden Tate Keenan Allen Larry Fitzgerald Allen Robinson Cooper Kupp Chris Godwin Tyler Lockett