Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar ranked the top 11 slot receivers in the NFL and he still comes in fifth overall despite turning 37 this year. In 2019, Fitzgerald worked in Kliff Kingsbury’s. Among those receivers, Westbrook may have the most potential, as he brought in 59 slot receptions on 83 targets for 646 yards and five touchdowns. Not bad for a second-year receiver who’s never had a lot of help from his quarterbacks at the NFL level. His 2.33 yards per route run out of the slot was the second-highest mark in the league. His drop rate in the slot was 5.8 percent, below the average for slot receivers (7.1 percent). Landry was near the top of ever category for slot receivers in 2016, and is clearly the cream of the crop when it comes to the position in today's NFL. PFF ranks among Tyler Boyd NFL’s top-5 slot receivers Tyler Boyd had a breakout year in 2018, and certainly did not fly under the radar. By Nick Manchester @NickManchester9 Mar 25, 2019, 9:00am EDT.
Jamison Crowder proved to be the most important offensive player for the Jets in 2019. He quickly became a favorite target of Sam Darnold’s and finished the year with a team-high in receptions, receiving yards and touchdowns.
Whether it was a combination of game script, scheme or a lack of protection, Darnold loved throwing the ball Crowder’s way. The wideout owned a 24.8 percent target share, 11th-highest in the league in 2019, and he made the most of it.
Crowder’s ability in the slot made him even more valuable, though, and his production ranked among the best in the NFL at the receiver position. Adam Gase used Crowder the best of the Jets’ skill position players. Crowder ran 70 percent of his 802 offensive snaps out of the slot in 2019 and caught 58 balls from the slot, which ranked fourth in the league behind only Larry Fitzgerald, Cooper Kupp and Julian Edelman, according to Pro Football Focus. His five touchdowns and 648 yards out of the slot also ranked fifth and ninth in the league, respectively.
Crowder wasn’t just a great slot receiver, he was also the Jets’ best red zone receiver as well. He led the team with 15 targets, which accounted for 30.6 percent of the Jets’ targets inside the 20-yard line, which ranked 20th in the league. All six of his touchdowns came in the red zone as well, including this beauty against the Ravens that had a 24 percent completion probability, according to NFL Next Gen Stats.
Top Slot Receivers In Nfl 2019
Crowder’s success is, sadly, a direct result of the Jets’ inept offense. New York ranked 28th in yards per completion with 10.7, which is coincidentally Crowder’s yards per completion total as well. The Jets also finished dead last with only 33 red zone attempts, meaning the Jets leaned on their slot receiver more inside the 20.
The signing of Crowder during the 2018 offseason came with little fanfare, but the production far outweighed the rest of that free agency class. Another year with Darnold and Gase should help Crowder build on his solid 2019 campaign, especially after Joe Douglas fortified the offensive line – which should help Le’Veon Bell – and brought in two speedy outside receivers in Breshad Perriman and Denzel Mims.
Regardless of the improvements on offense and the development of Darnold, the Jets will likely lean on Crowder once more in 2020 amid all of the uncertainty around the influx of talent. It will be hard to gauge how much better this team will be this season without a full offseason, but Crowder’s presence should ease concerns given his easy inclusion in Gase’s offense with Darnold at the helm. A healthy quarterback and stable offensive line should only make things easier for Crowder and the Jets, and their slot production could see a spike in efficiency even if the stats don’t increase.
In the 2019 NFL season, per Sports Info Solutions, there were 19,933 total quarterback dropbacks. Against those dropbacks, NFL defenses put four defensive backs on the field just 18% of the time (3,579 snaps), while nickel defense (with five defensive backs) ruled the league by far with 59% of all snaps (11,780). And if you want to know how much the NFL isn’t a base defense league anymore, consider this: Defenses lined up in dime coverage (six defensive backs on the field) on 20.9% of total dropbacks (4,091), which means that teams played more dime defense than base defense. The Seahawks were the only team to play base defense more than 50% of the time (67%), and the Cardinals finished second at 37%.
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All this is to say that unless you’re the Seahawks, you’d better have some top-level slot defenders if you want to put a credible pass defense out there in a league where offenses are implementing more kinds of receiver sets and route combinations than ever before.
And it’s not as if the skill sets required to be a slot defender are the same as those for an outside cornerback. You might be up against a 6-foot-5, 250-pound tight end on first down who can body you right out of the paint, and on the next play, you may have to deal with a small, speedy option-route receiver whose job is to juke you right out of your shoes. And as Richard Sherman once told me in his Seattle days, the thing about playing outside cornerback is that the boundary is your friend. That’s not the case when you’re in the slot, where you’re defending in space pretty much all the time.
Top Slot Receivers In Nfl 2019
So, which slot defenders were the most effective and valuable to their teams in 2019, and thus should be set up to do the same in 2020? With help from Pro Football Focus’ metrics, and a whole lot of tape study, here’s one list. To avoid small sample-size results, each of these defenders played at least 50% of their snaps in the slot.
Top 10 Nfl Slot Receivers 2019
Mike Hilton | Chris Harris Jr. | Jourdan Lewis | Tramon Williams | Mackensie Alexander | Nickell Robey-Coleman | Marlon Humphrey | D.J. Hayden | Brian Poole | K’Waun Williams | Tyrann Mathieu