EAGAN — The minute Adam Thielen was released, the wide receiver position shot up the board on the list of Minnesota Vikings needs in the NFL Draft.
But unlike Thielen, many of the top prospect receivers in this year’s class are not 6-foot-2 and 200 pounds. For example, North Carolina’s Josh Downs is 5-foot-9 and 171 pounds. He also caught 195 passes in the last two years, graded 92.1 vs. man coverage by PFF metrics, dropped just three passes on 116 targets and caught 72% of contested catches.
The NFL does not feature many of Downs’ type. Only 10 receivers that were 5-foot-10 or shorter gained 500-plus yards through the air last season. If you lower the threshold to Downs’ size, that number dropped to five players and only three with 50-plus receptions.
At his pre-draft press conference, Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah opined about the challenge of figuring out whether highly-gifted, undersized receivers are worth the investment.
“You’re seeing [smaller players] on the other side of the ball the guys that are guarding them,” Adofo-Mensah said. “With these things, you don’t know if it’s noise, if it’s a one-year thing, or it’s a three-year trend and ultimately time will tell us that. We have these conversations often in a way that we have to have an opinion on it but we don’t think we know more than we know.”
He continued…
“We are not exactly sure what is going to come through the pipeline. It always goes back to what can they do, how can his system set them up to succeed? If that’s a lighter guy, there’s ways to play with those guys. I think football will always be that way where you can use different skillets as long as the person calling the plays and the person bringing them in the building understands that.”
Former NFL general manager Mike Tannenbaum does not see size as the same factor that it used to be.
“It’s probably changed over the years,” Tannenbaum said. “Jordan Addison, Smith-Njigba, they’re not bigger guys but they are great run-after-catch guys and those guys are playing in the league now. You look at Garrett Wilson, he’s tremendously undersized and he had a great year last year for the Jets.”
What stands out to Tannenbaum is the differences in the way defenses are played now versus years past. Many teams are taking the approach of playing deep safeties and off-coverage zones to keep everything in front of them rather than risking giving up big plays off play-action passes.
“Working with all these defensive coaches for all the years in my career like Parcells, Belichick, Rex Ryan, Eric Mangini, I think, ‘Gosh they’re going to press [small receivers], make them get off a jam,’ but I see so much free release for these undersized guys that it really surprises me,” Tannenbaum said. “But they’re playing at the high levels of college and that’s translating. Even someone like [Boston College’s] Zay Flowers, he’s probably going to go on Thursday night and have a productive career but a lot of it is going to be pre-snap movement, get him in stacks and bunches, get him into the slot and get more free access into their routes.”
Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell has previous experience with a receiver who didn’t exactly fit all the specs thriving in the right role. Rams star Cooper Kupp ran a 4.62 40-yard dash (13th percentile among receivers), jumped just 31 inches (7th percentile) and didn’t have big hands or long arms yet he caught 145 passes to lead the NFL in 2021. One of the reasons for his success was that Kupp caught 95 balls when lined up in the slot (per PFF) and quarterback Matthew Stafford had a 143.8 QB rating when targeting Kupp out of the slot.
“How are you incorporating your skill players?” How are you trying to elevate what guys do well?” O’Connell said. “How you do that can change and the details…If your number one starting point is putting all your players in the best situation to have success, that is coaching in my mind.”
While Kupp’s prolific slot performance is exceptional, sliding receivers into the slot doesn’t exactly solve all problems. Last season only eight receivers had 500-plus yards when lining up in the slot. It is an answer but can’t be the only answer to maximizing an undersized receiver.
So while there are theories about how to give a player like Downs the best possible chance, the Vikings can’t draft a receiver with the 23rd overall pick based on the hopes that those things will work. They need something more concrete.
LSU department of economics professor Josh Scott went looking for those answers. Scott is a contributor to Reception Perception, a receiver data tracking site started by Yahoo! Sports’ Matt Harmon. He dove deep into the numbers looking for better evidence of a size/success correlation with receivers in the NFL. He used RP’s numbers to look at box score production and success rates vs. man and zone coverage based on players’ height and weight.
Here’s an example from the piece:
Scott did not find a clear connection between size and fantasy production or success rates of getting open vs. man/zone coverage, though there was some correlation with contested catch rates. He attempted to control for the number of routes run, alignment, age and differences in the way the league played from year to year.
“Overall these outcomes say: Don’t ignore that small wide receiver,” Scott said over a Zoom call between classes. “It’s not that it doesn’t matter at all, there’s a height requirement to play in the NFL… but there are many mechanisms to getting open.”
“We’re also not saying that some [small receivers] won’t have to be role players, it might not be best for Josh Downs to be an X receiver,” Scott added.
Scott points out that the elements of the receiver position that determine whether a receiver is going to be successful in the NFL have nothing to do with height and weight.
“Those graphs are not controlling for things like motivating, timing, tenacity, quarterback play and coaching style,” Scott said.
There are so many different playing styles within the receiver position that drawing the connection to height is challenging. Marquise Goodwin is a deep threat while Richie James Jr. is an underneath receiver. Some players run great double moves, others a great at yards after catch. Some beat press coverage, others need to go in motion. Being 5-foot-9 might take goal line fades off the table but bubble screens are a threat to defenses.
And many types can succeed. Scott uses the example of Kupp and Davante Adams posting similarly marvelous PFF grades but playing two completely different styles. He wants to look closer into performance versus press coverage because that might be something for coaches to consider when deploying their undersized receiver.
“There’s no discernable evidence that they can’t thrive but there’s all these other factors, like whether they end up on a team that knows how to utilize them,” Scott said. “Do they stay healthy? Do they grow? Do they make the transition from college to the NFL? Do they have the quarterback who can unlock them?”
From a practical angle, could it carry more risk if you have to worry more about deployment and usage with smaller receivers than 6-foot-2, 200-pound receivers? What if motioning Downs to get him away from press coverage doesn’t work? What if putting him in the slot isn’t the answer and he can’t escape battle defenders the same way a bigger receiver could? Is there simply more that can go wrong?
“If we’re evaluating them on pure talent, they are not more risky, I’d draft Josh Downs in a heartbeat,” Scott said. “It’s not any more risky than other guys because they still have to grow within the system. If Reception Perception [data] is showing you Downs is winning versus man coverage, zone coverage and doing well versus press and he’s one of the best contested catch receivers in the class there’s no reason to avoid him just because of height and weight.”
Scott points out that receivers who are taller have shortcomings too. TCU’s Quentin Johnston isn’t good with contested catches, for example.
The arguments are convincing. Still, it’s hard to overcome the fact that we don’t see too many 5-foot-9 or shorter receivers running wild in the NFL. Scott says selection bias and cause-and-effect have to be considered. If the NFL believed that short dudes couldn’t succeed and avoided them and gave them less opportunity then we wouldn’t find as many in the NFL even if the impact of their height wasn’t nearly what the league thought it was.
“We’ve gotten better at applying data,” Scott said. “This idea [that height matters] has been pervasive and it has caused the selection [of taller players].”
Kevin Cole of Unexpected Points showed the selection bias clearly in an article about correlation between draft position and the NFL Combine vs. success in the NFL. He showed that weight, hand size and arm length influenced draft stock but barely moved the needle in terms of production.
Back to Downs.
The problem that’s difficult to solve with him is that very few receivers his size were tall enough and weighed enough to even get onto Scott and Cole’s graphs. There’s a chance that he stretches beyond the boundaries and his size will matter more than the charts are telling us. That’s why Adofo-Mensah said that it’s hard to know whether someone who breaks the charts can make it without a bigger sample of players this size.
Though Adofo-Mensah has not been afraid to break charts. Last year his trade down with the Lions was scrutinized because it didn’t match up to the traditional draft values. O’Connell’s former team also drafted undersized receiver Tutu Atwell. So worries league wide about receivers’ size may instead open up an opportunity for the Vikings to take a more talented receiver than his draft position.
Such is life trying to predict which draft picks will work out. There’s only so much we can know. We know Downs, Jordan Addison, Zay Flowers, Tyler Scott and Co. were very good receivers in college and there isn’t evidence to suggest they can’t play in the NFL because of their size. Most of the time that’s the best you can do.
