On many plays the tight end is the seventh, meaning another outside receiver can line up behind the line of scrimmage. Like the X receiver, the alignment on the outside means there is the opportunity for speedy receivers to run deep routes. Unlike the X receiver, since these guys are behind the line of scrimmage they have more of a natural cushion from corners and are more difficult to jam. Smaller deep threats like DeSean Jackson and Brandin Cooks have done a lot of their damage from the Z spot in their careers.
This is why it is not necessarily accurate to typecast any undersized receiver as confined to the slot. Since Z receivers are off the line of scrimmage, they can also be put into motion, which means more inside breaking routes. They might even go all the way into the slot meaning slot receiver skills are also relevant for a Z receiver. People frequently think of Julian Edelman as a slot receiver, but I think you could argue the Patriots utilize him more as a Z.
There are always exceptions. Odell Beckham, Jr. His athleticism makes it difficult for corners to stick a jam, and his playmaking ability punishes those who miss those jams. In recent years we have seen the rise of bigger players in the slot. Teams frequently use skilled receiving tight ends there to take advantage of their size and give their quarterbacks easy targets.
In Arizona under Bruce Arians Larry Fitzgerald moved to the slot in part because his bigger body could aid blocking in the run game. Now your role might be X, Z, or slot for a play, and then you move to a different role for the next play. NFL offenses are becoming more versatile and more diverse. An offensive coordinator might want to move his best receiver from the X to the slot just to get him a more favorable matchup for a few plays.
Wideouts are often the fastest players on the football field. This speed is utilized to beat defenders on deep routes. Slot receivers on the other hand tend to be quicker rather than fast.
They often have a quick first step but their top-end speed is behind most wide receivers. Stature is another key difference between these positions. Wideouts are taller, stronger, and bulkier than slot receivers.
Wideouts come in many different sizes but they will almost always be taller than slots. Wide receivers often are much larger in terms of weight. An example of multiple slot receivers is below from college football:. To learn more about defenses, as well as offensive packages, check out our football handbook.
The extra defensive back will often cover DB lines up in the slot. Below we highlighted who the slot cornerback is on the field:. Just like with slot receivers, they are lined up inside of a boundary cornerback. They typically are lined up to cover the slot receivers. Slot corners need to play both press coverage, which is extremely hard to do from the slot and off-man.
Slot receivers emerging as a big piece of offenses forced defenses to adjust by adding slot cornerbacks. An offense using playmakers in the slot gives a speed player the ability to go inside or outside. This is much different than a boundary receiver who can only go straight downfield or go inward.
But saw his wide targets cut by more than half -- Doug Baldwin's retirement opened up the primary role inside, with DK Metcalf and his less refined route tree making more sense gobbling up targets out wide. Lockett wasn't as efficient last season as he was two years ago, but considering he was shattering efficiency records then and saw his workload increase by half and lost out on having Baldwin drawing coverage away from him, that was never going to be in the cards.
The third player didn't even hit DYAR out of the slot as he didn't really start coming on until the second half of the season: rookie Deebo Samuel. He had a It will be very interesting to see if he comes close to that level of production over his sophomore season, with three major strikes against him -- he's recovering from a Jones fracture which may cost him part of the season; the 49ers lost Emmanuel Sanders, whose arrival corresponds with Samuel's boost in production; and in the first round San Francisco drafted Brandon Aiyuk, who also is a slot receiver who fits well into Kyle Shanahan's scheme.
Someone needs to play out wide, presumably, but I'm not sure even San Francisco knows who that will be at this point. Still, that's a very promising start for the rookie out of South Carolina. More than twice as many receivers were primarily slot receivers than had the majority of targets out wide, but there were still a couple receivers who excelled in a more traditional role. The Cowboys were one of the three teams who threw wide more than to the slot, and one of the major reasons was Amari Cooper, who has been a more natural fit for Dallas than he was in Oakland.
Remember, too, that Cooper was hampered by knee and ankle injuries over the last seven weeks of the season; Cooper had DYAR and a You can understand why the Cowboys would be eager to lock Cooper up to a long-term extension, if not so much why they weren't excited to lock the other half of that passing combo up to a similar deal.
The other player of note to top DYAR out wide -- excluding Michael Thomas, who, again, was good at everything -- was Calvin Ridley, which is interesting. Somewhat like Lockett, Ridley's move to a more exclusive role is a change from ; he had 48 targets wide two years ago compared to 46 targets from the slot.
But his DVOA splits two years ago showed him being better outside, and new offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter split Ridley out wide far more often than Steve Sarkisian had the year before -- itself at least in part a knock-on effect from increasing Julio Jones' slot targets, though Jones was still targeted as a wideout more often than as a slot receiver in It's difficult for an offense to really support two high-usage outside receivers, at least according to the numbers we've gotten over the past four years.
The departures of Austin Hooper, Mohamed Sanu, and Devonta Freeman leave some slot targets open for Atlanta, but do you move Ridley more inside after his great performance out wide in ? There are some interesting decisions to be made in Atlanta, though having two wideouts excel at the same skill sets is far from the worst problem to have.
At some point, that stops being fair. Of course, some of that is due to his massive target share, but that massive target share is a result of massive amounts of value. Finishing third on both sides of the ledger is basically insane. That makes adding Justin Jefferson to the Vikings' offense interesting, as he's coming from an offense where he was mostly used out of the slot himself.
The Vikings don't really have a natural replacement for Stefon Diggs out wide; Thielen's 20 targets were second-most on the team behind Diggs' After him would come Bisi Johnson, who wasn't particularly effective on his 16 wide targets last season. Minnesota has a bit of work to do to figure this one out. Most of the biggest gaps between slot and wide DVOA come from players with small sample sizes in one or the other categories -- Randall Cobb and Hunter Renfrow not catching their one wide target is not particularly indicative of their skill levels.
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