The 2018 wide receiver class was known as a thick, but starless group at the time of its drafting. Two years in, it’s definitely thick, but stars are beginning to emerge. All of Calvin Ridley, Courtland Sutton, D.J. Moore, and Michael Gallup have an argument not only as the top dog in the class but as upper-echelon receivers in the league altogether. I made the case for Gallup most recently—as his success seems the most underappreciated to me—but all four are great talents, and they aren’t alone. D.J. Chark, Christian Kirk, and James Washington fill out the top of a thick second tier.
Last week, I dove into Chark, a walking home run who needs to improve his separation ability and route running to make last season look like more than the peak of his career. This week, it’s Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Calvin Ridley, about whom almost the exact opposite could be said.
The game has always been easy for Ridley. He was the top WR recruit of the 2015 class, dominant for three seasons at Alabama, a first-round pick in 2018, and an exciting young player in his first two years all for the same, well-recognized reason: route-running. Ridley’s ability to generate throwing windows by manipulating coverage has been the stuff of legends since he broke Amari Cooper’s record for freshman receiving yards with the Crimson Tide.
Such numbers are born out in Matt Harmon’s Reception Perception project, which credits Ridley as a 95th percentile separator against man coverage (the fourth-best number in the league) and 86th percentile separator against press coverage. Ridley remains an average player against zone coverage in terms of separation ability, which has been a complaint of Falcons’ fans on their young receiver. Ridley was quoted after a quiet Week 3 against the Colts as saying that it was “hard to get open” against their two-deep zone coverage.
When you flick on the film, however, it isn’t necessarily that Ridley is bad against zone coverage, it’s that he’s just wicked good against man coverage. As such, the Falcons worked harder to get Ridley in isolation situations later in the season, especially after the Mohamed Sanu trade when he stepped clearly into the WR2 role. By placing Ridley as the isolated receiver opposite trips or with an in-line tight end in 2x2 formations, Ridley was more likely to draw true man coverage than deal with pattern-matching in the strength of the defense.
Splitting Ridley’s season into pre- and post-Sanu eras is a worthy exercise. Ridley played 13 games last season, with the Sanu trade following Week 7. On a six-game stretch after Sanu left, Ridley saw 8.2 targets/game, catching 5.7 for a 69.4% catch rate. That catch rate would have been a top-10 number across the entire year. He saw 14.5 yards/reception and 10.06 yards per target, and that yards/target number would have been a top-10 number across an entire season, too.
Largely because he lost the final two games of the season with an abdominal injury, Ridley failed to hit the 1,000-yard mark for the second consecutive season. But across his final seven games, Ridley was on pace for full-season numbers of 131 targets, 91 receptions, 1,315 yards, and eight touchdowns. This would have been, comfortably, the best season of any WR from the 2018 class, beating out Courtland Sutton, Michael Gallup, and D.J. Moore in essentially every major category.
Ridley’s legendary route running bears out his usage, especially when considered across the course of the pre- and post-Sanu eras. Ridley’s ability to change speeds and accelerate through breaks and angles is unlike any in the league besides Stefon Diggs and Odell Beckham Jr. His gear shift is smooth and responsive, which allows him to defeat leverage that most wide receivers wouldn’t have a chance against.
https://youtu.be/3a1WR9lQ4_s
It’s important to dive deep into the ways that Ridley is winning here. By using route stems to tell lies, Ridley takes corners who initially have ideal leverage on his route stem and moves them off of their spot, causing them to panic, open their hips, and leave their feet. This is accomplished through a combination of vision, timing, and acceleration, and is very advanced, even for the NFL level.
There’s an old adage in route running that goes “everything is a fade, until it’s not.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF1YKg-4MZs
The spirit here is that outside receivers should always initially stem as if they’re working to a deep nine ball pattern, to force the corner to respect the threat of the most dangerous route first. Then, once that threat is established, the receiver can break off into his tree of routes with an advantage over the cornerback.
This imagery works nicely against press coverage, but Ridley rarely gets pressed. Out of respect for his route-running and releases, Ridley saw more cushion than any other receiver in the NFL, per NFL’s Next Gen Stats—this, with only 13% of his snaps coming from the slot.
https://youtu.be/-_QURuX707U
Ridley doesn’t get pressed because he obliterates press, so teams think that they can play him in off-coverage, but that doesn’t work because Ridley has taken the core concept of “everything is a fade, until it’s not,” and applied it wonderfully to his off-coverage stems. Ridley’s ability to accelerate into his breaks allows him to gobble up ground on defenders with seemingly more than enough cushion on his intermediate- and deep-breaking routes. Once they begin to open their stride and commit their weight to Ridley’s stem, he’s able to snap across their face and maintain his speed into a different route break.
Watch Ridley’s vertical stems again here, focusing on the speed he puts upfield just before he changes direction. On the first rep, watch how he pulls free safety Tre Boston (33) toward him before hitting the jets and crossing his face. On the second rep, watch how he brings cornerback Donte Jackson (26) upfield and makes him accelerate so that he’ll overrun Ridley’s eventual break back outside. On the third rep, look at how open and aggressive his stride is, knowing that he can take a wide speed turn to the outside so long as he gets CB Johnathan Joseph’s (24) momentum pushing upfield. On the fourth rep, look at how that little hesitation step, then sudden five-yard explosion gets CB Akeem King (36) to stop his feet, then aggressively accelerate downfield, as he thinks he’s getting hit with a double move.
https://youtu.be/3a1WR9lQ4_s
Once again, I think the list of receivers best at manipulating off-coverage in the NFL starts with Ridley, Diggs, and Beckham in some order. But to watch Ridley, only in his second year in the pros, win with such nuance and calculated, veteran skill is extremely encouraging to his continued explosion in year three.
But what is truly thrilling about Ridley is that, for all of that acceleration, for his quality contested catch ability and route-running, he is never out of control. Ridley is impossibly smooth, and his ability to decelerate—to take that vertical stem and not just redirect his path, but actually slam on the breaks and cut back to the football—illustrates just the kind of command he has over his game. In this way, Ridley is truly a luxury sports car: he handles like a dream.
https://youtu.be/mhGMJElJkWw
What we have here now is a player that can’t be pressed, can’t be given cushion, and can threaten deep to work back short, or take intermediate-breaking routes and create so much separation that he rips off chunk gains. Ridley isn’t necessarily a home run threat as a deep route-runner because his straight-line speed is only good, not amazing, but in the intermediate areas of the field, few are better at creating space.
That lack of a true, elite deep ability matters, because Ridley doesn’t hit too many home runs. Without the deep bomb, he would need to be a strong YAC player—there, he’s weak. His actual YAC is -1.2 yards lower than his expected YAC, per Next Gen Stats—that’s tied for the fourth-worst mark in the league. It is odd that a player with Ridley’s body control and burst is not better at generating yards after the catch, but it is worth noting that so many of his routes end on the sideline, which does limit his opportunity a bit.
So perhaps Ridley has some of the best doubles in the game, but not much more. That may leave him a tier below the Stefon Diggs and Odell Beckhams of the world for now, and playing next to Julio Jones doesn’t help much there either. But as teams accept their inability to play Ridley with cushion, they’re going to give him more press—and when they do, he’ll get more deep bomb opportunities.
As it stands, a 1,000-yard season is a near inevitability for a healthy Ridley. What remains left unseen is if he can maintain the production he generated during that quick flash of Sanu-less games to close out 2019.
The Falcons lost tight end Austin Hooper, who out-targeted Ridley last season (97 to 93) and added only TE Hayden Hurst in free agency and the draft. Hurst is almost definitely a downgrade on Hooper as a pass-catcher, so with all things considered, Ridley is going to have every opportunity to keep things hot—if his efficacy remains at his 2019 average, he’s got a chance to outproduce even Sutton and Moore next year, despite being a WR2 on his team relative to their WR1 statuses.
Just how high Ridley’s ceiling gets is conditional on his growth as a YAC player and capitalization on deep balls, but when it comes to the meat and potatoes of playing wide receiver, he’s as invulnerable as it gets. There’s no route he can’t run or ball he can’t catch. The game is just easy for a guy with his talent.
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