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Ben Solak
With NFL rookie minicamps underway, it feels as if all the focus is on the 2025 draft class. But I’ve seen enough Tetairoa McMillan catches and Ashton Jeanty runs over the past few months — I’m flipping back to the 2024 for another look at that group.
For many NFL and draft fans, prospects fade into the background once they’re picked. Everyone has an opinion on Rome Odunze until Odunze is selected by some team they don’t watch every Sunday, and all those Odunze takes fall to the wayside. I reintroduced myself to the 2024 class this week, focusing on the wide receivers. Nine were picked in the first 37 selections in 2024. I was impressed watching the tape again; it’s a great group.
To go over the class, I’d like to ask — and answer — one outstanding question for 13 different second-year receivers based on their rookie usage and output. For some, big performances demand big questions; for others, quiet debuts leave me with smaller thoughts.
Jump to a question about:
McConkey | Thomas | Harrison
Nabers | Odunze | Worthy
Other intriguing second-year WRs
Six big questions
This is, of course, an annoying question. What exactly constitutes a “WR1” is totally up for debate. Is it a productivity thing? Everyone who catches at least 30% of his team’s passes or accumulates 30% of his team’s yards is clearly the WR1? Is it a role thing? WR1s are the big guys on the outside who beat the other team’s best corner on a third down, right? Or is it a vibe thing? Put 20 cornerbacks in a room, show them flashcards of various NFL receivers, chart their reactions of disgust and scorn and begrudging respect, and thereby precipitate some WR1 matrix?
Were it the last definition, I’m confident McConkey would be a WR1, despite the fact he was a second-round pick for the Chargers. McConkey — who had 1,149 yards and seven TDs in 2024 — seems like a handful and a half to cover. An impossibly sudden route runner, McConkey is nigh on impossible to shadow in true man coverage. And unlike many of the shifty route runners we’ve seen win on slants and stops over the years, he has serious speed — enough to turn shallow targets into big gains. McConkey had 15 receptions of 20-plus yards last season, third among rookies (behind Brian Thomas Jr. and Malik Nabers) and 18th among all NFL receivers. He catches and runs for bigger plays than folks realize. But it’s his separation ability that really shines.
The Chargers maximized McConkey’s route running while protecting him from bigger, physical coverage by lining him up in the slot for a significant majority of the time — 70.5% of his routes and 66.7% of his targets. In our meaningless WR1 conversation, this is very meaningful; we don’t typically think of WR1s as living in the slot. Even the WR1s you think are in the slot a lot are not in the slot this much. By routes run, Dallas’ CeeDee Lamb was at 49.0% and Detroit’s Amon-Ra St. Brown was at 45.2%. McConkey ran only 24.6% of his routes last season vertical, as charted by NFL Next Gen Stats. Only New England’s DeMario Douglas and Buffalo’s Khalil Shakir had lower rates.
Here is my favorite rep from McConkey out of the slot last season, coming in Week 4 against Kansas City. The Chargers are running double slants behind a zone RPO, and quarterback Justin Herbert pulls the ball to throw once Chiefs linebacker Nick Bolton steps down into the hole. Watch how McConkey initially stems the cornerback outside to hold him in place and give himself as much room inside as possible to work. Then he plants his outside foot in the ground and explodes into the break with suddenness and good technique — an active off hand to keep the corner away and eyes back to the football. Herbert hits him in stride, and then the wheels show up. McConkey screams around the safety for a 37-yard gain.
Watching some rookie receivers for a piece. Watch Ladd in the slot. Highly explosive and twitchy mover. pic.twitter.com/mO5sgZnW1q
— Benjamin Solak (@BenjaminSolak) May 12, 2025
It’s worth remarking: The rest of the Chargers’ WR depth chart couldn’t play the slot. Both Joshua Palmer and Quentin Johnston are big, linear bodies who don’t win on quick-breaking routes. In 2025, Palmer (departed in free agency to the Bills) will be replaced by second-round rookie Tre Harris, a 6-foot-3, 205-pound receiver who is also at his best on vertical, downfield routes. So McConkey’s residence in the slot is, in part, a function of the roster on which he landed.
In a different role, we might have a cleaner answer to the WR1 question. McConkey’s 2.57 yards per route run last season was seventh in the league, behind only Thomas’ 2.61 for the best number among rookies. (Those numbers were also sixth best and seventh best among rookie receivers since 2000. The five better belong to A.J. Brown, Justin Jefferson, Odell Beckham Jr., Puka Nacua and Ja’Marr Chase, which feels like awesome news for McConkey and Thomas).
But here’s what’s funny. If we control for only routes run as the widest receiver in the formation, McConkey’s yards per route run jumps up to 2.64, which exceeded that of Thomas (2.37) and every other rookie receiver.
On many of these snaps, McConkey is the widest pass catcher in a condensed formation or the outermost man in a bunch — not exactly a traditional “wide” receiver — so we’re still not exactly getting the measure we want. The reality is that McConkey is 6-foot and plays around 185 pounds, and he clearly loses to physicality on those outside snaps more than, say, Mike Evans or Courtland Sutton. Yet he can still win against press with strong releases and admirable feistiness — just enough to keep the defense honest while he does his yeoman’s work from the slot.
There’s enough to worry about with McConkey as the crowning jewel of a receiver room that we can’t yet call him a true WR1. There’s all the slot-related stuff, but he also had five drops and two fumbles last season, and he just can’t break many tackles at his size. But in my heuristic and arbitrary sense of a WR1-ness, McConkey feels like a guy. He feels like the guy. He’s profoundly unpleasant to cover, and even if he becomes a Robin to a more traditional Batman on the outside, it will be in the mold of DeVonta Smith running beside A.J. Brown, or Chris Godwin running beside Mike Evans.
If that feels like a cowardly answer to our question, it is. I’d love to just shut my eyes and throw a diet Amon-Ra St. Brown comp into the world. But I’m just not there yet.
I really think Thomas, a first-round pick for Jacksonville in 2024, was one of the 10 best receivers in football last season (1,282 yards, 10 touchdowns). That doesn’t mean he will be again this year, or that he’s a top-10 receiver overall. Development is not linear, and the Jaguars just had an offensive coaching staff change and drafted a receiver with the No. 2 pick (sort of, depending on how we view Travis Hunter), so things are about to change for Thomas for the second time in as many years.
With that said … holy smokes.
Thomas can flat-out fly. He hit a top speed of 22.15 mph on this 85-yard touchdown against the Colts, one of the more hilarious plays of the 2024 season. Only KaVontae Turpin registered a faster speed as a ball carrier last year, and Thomas weighs roughly 1.35 KaVontae Turpins at 205 pounds. But even more impressive is his ability to track, adjust and fight for the football downfield. In Week 7 against the Patriots, Thomas gave star corner Christian Gonzalez more difficulty than any other receiver Gonzalez faced last season, and the bulk of Thomas’ damage came on this big post.
— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) May 12, 2025
Thomas makes this catch look much easier than it is. Ideally, this ball hits Thomas between the hashes, pulling him away from coverage, but Trevor Lawrence‘s throw drifts upfield. Look at how early (right as he crosses the 45-yard line) Thomas identifies the path and begins adjusting to the ball — with no loss of momentum. Then he has to make a concentration catch through contact, at full speed, as Gonzalez contests the catch point. Not easy at all.
Thomas’ ball-tracking and adjustment at full speed and through contact are eye-popping. He never needs to downshift and rarely loses to size — nor should he, at 6-foot-4, 205 pounds with an almost 80-inch wingspan. The full menu of field-stretching routes — posts, verticals, etc. — are available to him, and as the Jaguars realized what they had, they started to run him on more deep crossers and overs to take advantage of his breakaway speed.
But Thomas does not play at reckless speeds, nor is he limited to linear routes. Watch this downfield isolation route against the Dolphins in Thomas’ first game. Watch how easily he eats up vertical space, how he pulls the cornerback in wayward directions by disappearing behind his back shoulder and stepping on his toes. Compare what Thomas is able to do in this route to that of Gabe Davis, another big-bodied receiver with long speed, at the bottom of the screen.
— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) May 12, 2025
That’s silly stuff. You take some of the best big receivers in the league right now — Nico Collins, Tee Higgins, Mike Evans, Courtland Sutton, etc. — and ask them to run that route, and I’m not sure you’re getting an equal imitation.
The sky is the limit with Thomas. Watching his rookie season makes me feel the way I did when watching A.J. Brown’s rookie season: “Oh, the enormous fast man is also very good at receiver, we are all in considerable danger.” I mentioned it in the McConkey segment, but it bears repeating here: Since the turn of the century, the five best rookie receiver seasons by yards per route run belong to A.J. Brown, Justin Jefferson, Odell Beckham Jr., Puka Nacua and Ja’Marr Chase. Thomas is sixth.
Thomas also did all of this in a total mess of a Jaguars offense, which is both a feather in his cap and context for his dominance. He and Lawrence were often not in sync to start the season, and by the time they got some wrinkles ironed out and the offense began skewing toward Thomas as the primary pass catcher, Lawrence was injured and sat out the rest of the season. You can easily talk me into a rosier Year 2 outlook for Thomas in a Liam Coen-coached offense that sees 17 healthy Lawrence games.
At the same time, Thomas got a 25.3% target share (ninth highest in the league last season) on a team that had to pass the ball quite a bit, in that it regularly trailed its opponents. The raw production might dip in the future, even if the efficiency stays up.
If we redrafted the 2024 draft tomorrow, I’d pretty comfortably take Thomas as the first receiver off the board. He has prototypical size, atypical speed and far more advanced technical skills than I gave him credit for during last season. I think we’re going to talk about him as a perennial top-five receiver — the way we talk about Chase and Jefferson — within the next two or three years.
The No. 4 pick led the league in contested targets as a rookie for the Cardinals with 40, per NFL Next Gen Stats.
There are a few reasons something like this happens. For one, the quarterback wants to give his receiver chances, no matter the cost. Davante Adams had 51 tight-window targets in 2022 with the Raiders, then another 41 in 2023. A worryingly critical part of Josh McDaniels’ offensive game plan for the Raiders was simply “get the ball somewhere near Adams and let him do the rest.”
Kyler Murray clearly treated Harrison this same way — whether it was because he really held Harrison in that esteem, or because he was coached to throw it to Harrison no matter the circumstances, I don’t know. Murray would default to a Harrison one-on-one on the backside of concepts when the frontside was available to read out. Not the wrong decision, just a telling one. And it was doubly telling when we consider that these throws weren’t really going all that well, yet the Cardinals stayed on them anyway.
Here’s one such play against the Bears. Harrison is to the backside of a 3×1 formation on third-and-3. The Cardinals have a pick route to the bottom of the screen, and Harrison is on a fade to the top. Personally, I love the slant to Michael Wilson (No. 14) at the bottom, as Greg Dortch (No. 4) has an easy release into the pick, and no Bears defenders are close enough to rally and tackle before the sticks. But Murray sees the backside safety drop, leaving Harrison totally isolated and takes the one-on-one.
— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) May 12, 2025
It’s a defensible decision by the letter of the law, but one-on-one fades are hard to hit perfectly. Harrison does nothing wrong — good release, explosive upfield stem — but the corner is expecting a fade all the way and sits atop the route. Murray throws to Harrison’s upfield shoulder and the cornerback is able to rip through the catch point for a quality pass breakup.
Another reason a player ends up with 40 total tight-window targets, as Harrison did this past season, is he wasn’t asked to separate much. This sounds stupid — every coach wants all his receivers to separate — but various roles offer more breaking routes and route-running freedom than others.
When we look at receivers with a high tight-window target rate over the past few years, we of course see some examples of limited skill: DeVante Parker’s 2021, 2022 and 2023 season all show up as high tight-window seasons because Parker doesn’t separate well. But we also see a weirdly dense smattering of non-CeeDee Lamb Cowboys, which implies some sort of role-based agent. Consider that 2024 Jalen Brooks, 2024 Brandin Cooks, 2023 Michael Gallup, 2022 Michael Gallup and 2024 Jalen Tolbert all had a tight-window target rate of 34% or higher (Harrison was 35.1% in 2024).
Why so many Cowboys? Because the Dallas offense has never really asked its non-Lamb receivers to run a diverse route tree, go into motion or change up their alignments. It’s a very static system, which makes it easy for opposing defensive backs to predict. That leads to tighter coverage.
Arizona’s role for Harrison was fairly predictable to start the season. He lined up out wide and ran down the field, looking for targets on go balls or on the back shoulder. Harrison had 52 targets against press coverage (second only to Ja’Marr Chase) in large part because opposing defenses knew the Cardinals would stick their outside receivers on the line of scrimmage and not move them. Harrison ran exactly seven routes after going in motion all season; only eight receivers had fewer, and most of them were part-time players.
Seeing the company that Harrison keeps on some of these lists is concerning. Also among the tight-window receivers who rarely go in motion are Amari Cooper, DeAndre Hopkins and Mike Williams. Those are older receivers who were more diverse in their heydays but now can’t be trusted to run away from coverage, so their best value add is that of crafty, physical ball-winners downfield. More optimistically, he’s in the Calvin Ridley or Courtland Sutton mold — players who also mostly lined up wide last season, saw a huge share of their teams’ total air yards and were expected to consistently win on the back shoulder and in contested situations.
But that has never been Harrison’s best skill — he lost on more than a few contested balls last season. And it certainly doesn’t reflect his athleticism — he remains the smooth, 6-foot-4 route runner he was coming out of Ohio State.
Harrison simply was not used creatively last season, when he had 885 yards and eight TDs. He was asked to play the game on hard mode as a rookie, winning all of his catches through contact. He was never hidden from the opponent’s best cover man. He could have won a few more jump balls than he did, but Murray could have thrown him a few better jump balls, and offensive coordinator Drew Petzing also certainly could have eased his burden with a bunch set or two. I was wholly unimpressed by the Cardinals’ plan for Harrison last season and remain accordingly optimistic on his future as a good NFL wide receiver.
That player is in there, should the Cardinals want to go find him.
What does a normal season look like for Malik Nabers?
Nabers saw 30.8% of the Giants’ team targets last season. That’s … well, quite a lot. In the past 10 seasons, only 14 receivers saw more than 30% of their team’s total target share, and none of them were rookies. In fact, Nabers leads all rookie receivers since 2000 in team target share.
Here’s another one. Nabers was targeted on 39.9% of the Giants’ pass attempts against man coverage — four out of every 10. I don’t have coverage target data for too many seasons, but since 2016, that target rate against man coverage is exceeded by only 2020 Davante Adams and 2022 Tyreek Hill — two of the best receiver seasons we’ve seen in the past decade.
Nabers, the No. 6 pick last April, handled an impossible volume for the otherwise anemic Giants offense last season. Unsurprisingly, he was highly productive but only fairly efficient. (It’s hard to be very efficient on high volume — that’s pretty much the definition of being elite.) Though Nabers dominated the Giants’ available targets, he was only fine on a per-target basis. Of 78 qualified receivers, his first down/touchdown per target rate (32.2%) was 67th; his yards per target (7.0) was 64th. It’s worth noting that other players with high target rates, such as A.J. Brown and Drake London, still produced a high number of first downs and touchdowns.
Nabers’ profile looks more like that of a slot receiver — somewhere on the CeeDee Lamb-to-Josh Downs spectrum of high-volume receivers who dominate with quick separation underneath. But Nabers played out wide much more and saw his targets farther downfield. It really was the case of a uniquely bad team funneling every throw they could to their one uniquely good player.
The film on Nabers is awesome. He has elite body control and sideline awareness, which allows him to make spectacular catches in tight windows, and he has the speed and release package to win on downfield routes. Watching him yank this passing game onto his shoulders for four quarters reminds me of Lamb on some recent Cowboys teams. He finished with 109 catches for 1,204 yards and seven touchdowns. I’d love to see him spend more time in the slot and less time taking brutal shots. The Giants cordoned off that slot role for Wan’Dale Robinson and should be willing to open it up for more competition this year.
I don’t think Nabers should be carrying more than 30% of the team’s targets; he isn’t built for that much contact. I’d like to see his volume decrease so that his effectiveness — bigger plays, fresher legs, more YAC — can increase. Of course, the Giants’ receiving corps is much the same as it was last season, but a guy can dream.
Where was Rome Odunze last season?
Well, the Bears’ No. 9 overall pick was often being thrown an uncatchable ball. According to ESPN’s charting, Odunze saw 37 targets that were overthrown or underthrown, which led all receivers by a lot. Courtland Sutton was second with 29. Now, inaccurate balls can be as much a receiver’s fault as they are the quarterback’s, but it’s no great secret that rookie QB Caleb Williams was missing all of his receivers last season. DJ Moore was third in the league with 27 inaccurate targets, and Keenan Allen was 10th with 24.
Odunze saw the most misses for Chicago because he made the most rookie mistakes, often miscommunicating with Williams on route adjustments and timing. He was also used on the most challenging throws — downfield, namely. Odunze was sixth in the league last season in unrealized air yards. That’s air yards the player got via target but failed to convert into receiving yards for whatever reason. In this case, it was mainly because of uncatchable footballs.
Odunze was the best vertical receiver of the Bears’ three starters, but that was never his best skill coming out of college. Allen has been replaced by rookie Luther Burden III, who has some real speed. I’m curious to see if Burden becomes the field stretcher, which would allow Odunze to spend more time winning on physical intermediate routes and back-shoulder balls.
2:00
Why Marcus Spears likes Bears’ rebuild
Marcus Spears and Jason McCourty praise the Bears’ offseason and state that it’s time for Caleb Williams to step up to the plate.
Though I am more than a little worried about the severe lack of chemistry between Williams and Odunze, I am willing to give Odunze a lot of grace for suffering through a carousel of offensive coaches on a team rife with execution errors. Veterans Moore and Allen also could not get on the same page with Williams.
Early returns will be significant from the new coaching staff in Chicago. Coach Ben Johnson runs a highly detailed offense, and if Odunze isn’t sharp with his landmarks and route breaks, there are plenty of pass-catching options in that Bears locker room who could jump him on the depth chart. But if Odunze’s development was simply stunted a year by a bad environment in Chicago, we’ll also see that fairly quickly during camp. He’s one to watch in August, as he tries to improve on his 734 yards and three TDs from 2024.
Was the Super Bowl an omen for Xavier Worthy?
In the first half of the 2024 season, the Chiefs were trying to use Worthy as a downfield receiver, and it was not working. Through Weeks 1-12, Worthy averaged 11.9 air yards per target and was catching only 51.9% of his passes. Kansas City’s first-rounder struggled to find the football in the air and catch through contact.
Necessity became the mother of invention, and as the Chiefs’ running game plummeted in effectiveness, they began using Worthy as an underneath target and even a ball carrier on reverses and jet sweeps to create some easy explosives while also moving the sticks. Worthy’s depth of target tumbled; from Week 13 through the conference championship game, his air yards per target was 5.5 — less than half his previous figure — and his catch rate accordingly rose to 73.7%. Worthy also had 11 carries in the first 12 weeks of the season, then 12 in the final seven. (Worthy finished the regular season with 638 receiving yards and six TD catches.)
Entering the Super Bowl, the Worthy role felt clear: screens, sweeps, reverses and shallow crosses. Get the ball into his hands and use his acceleration — not his deep speed — as an asset to break defenders’ tackle angles and create first downs.
Then the Super Bowl hit like a ton of bricks: eight catches on eight targets for 157 yards and two scores. Sure, most of that was in garbage time, but it doesn’t change the fact that the Chiefs got one quick, fleeting glimpse at the Worthy they had hoped they drafted.
Assuming Rashee Rice returns to the starting lineup after his knee injury and reclaims his demand of shallow and intermediate targets — where he was at his best in 2023 and 2024 — then Worthy will suddenly need to deliver on his downfield promise. It’s easy to forget because of the happy note he landed on, but Worthy’s minus-9.6% catch rate above expectation was the worst number among all receivers during the 2024 regular season (per NFL Next Gen Stats). He was not making big grabs for much of the year, and he has to pick up where he left off in New Orleans.
It’s an enormous Year 2 for Worthy.
Seven smaller questions
Keon Coleman: Is a step forward in the cards?
The big-bodied, contested-catch expert from Florida State was exactly that for the Bills in his rookie season — a big-play ball-winner who saw 39 of his 57 targets against man coverage. Though he typically wins with physicality, Coleman showed enough wiggle in his routes and surprising shiftiness after the catch such that there’s an exciting profile in there. He’ll get a bigger route tree and more opportunities in Year 2, and he should continue earning quarterback Josh Allen‘s trust.
Xavier Legette: Where is the deep connection?
It was a mixed bag for Legette’s rookie season in Carolina. There were some nice moments of clean routes and tough snags, but there were also some debilitatingly bad drops and concentration lapses. Legette needs a better plan for getting off press coverage if he’s ever going to fill the role of big-bodied field stretcher, let alone blossom into something more. Legette’s 499 unrealized air yards were seventh most in the league last season. He and Panthers quarterback Bryce Young just could not connect downfield (unlike an undrafted free agent from the 2024 class we’ll get to in a moment).
Adonai Mitchell: Is there any stability at all here?
Mitchell struggled mightily last season. We saw bad routes, bad drops, mental errors and clear moments of frustration. But it’s not too hard to see the source of his frustration. Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson struggled to connect with all of his receivers, but he struggled most with Mitchell. Mitchell was used as a shot-play merchant; he was targeted on 40% of his routes against man coverage and averaged 3.9 air yards per route run, behind only New Orleans’ Rashid Shaheed. He probably will remain as such while stuck behind Michael Pittman Jr., Josh Downs and now tight end Tyler Warren in the pecking order.
Jalen McMillan: Is WR3 still up for grabs in Tampa Bay?
I was very bullish on Year 2 for McMillan, who rose nicely to the challenge after Chris Godwin was lost for the season to an ankle injury. Then the Buccaneers drafted Emeka Egbuka in the first round of the 2025 draft, sliding McMillan squarely into a battle for WR3 responsibilities this season. McMillan is a savvy route runner with better speed than he’s given credit for, and he has some spectacular catch ability in him. I still believe in the player, even if the opportunity for high volume is vanishing.
Ricky Pearsall: Does he have Kyle Shanahan’s trust yet?
It usually takes time for rookie 49ers receivers. Neither Deebo Samuel Sr. nor Brandon Aiyuk were overnight sensations for Shanahan, and the same arc should be expected for Pearsall, especially when you consider the time he sat out because of injury in his rookie year. Pearsall had one splashy game against the Lions late last season, but he otherwise stayed quiet on the stat sheet. I will say: The film shows a high-caliber route runner who should excel in this offense, once his number finally starts getting called.
Jalen Coker: Can he hold down his spot in the rotation?
Coker did exactly what an undrafted free agent needs to do to stand out with his opportunities: make plays. Operating largely from the slot for the Panthers, Coker showcased a wide catch radius and good chemistry with Bryce Young, shining especially late last season and in Adam Thielen‘s absence (hamstring). Coker feels like the clear WR4 behind Thielen, Legette and first-round rookie Tetairoa McMillan, but he played well enough last season to be in the rotation this year and could continue to push Legette for playing time as the season progresses.
Devaughn Vele: Does he have a chance to hold his job?
Vele won the big slot job in Sean Payton’s Broncos offense last season, though it didn’t amount to much production: 41 catches, 475 yards and three scores. On an efficiency basis, Vele was something to watch, though: 52% of his targets went for first downs or touchdowns, which was fourth in the NFL. His 2.1 yards per route run against zone coverage ranked a respectable 34th. Then the Broncos spent a third-round pick on Pat Bryant, another big-bodied receiver who Payton has said reminds him of Michael Thomas. Vele is fighting for his job now.
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