Ask a group of Saints fans which player they’re most excited to see in 2021 and you’ll hear a lot about Marquez Callaway. Last year’s undrafted find out of Tennessee made an early impression for his aggressive return skills on special teams, but he also seemed to catch everything that was thrown his way while fighting hard for yards after the catch. It’s not hard to see why the Who Dat Nation is hyping him up as a breakout candidate.
But some of the talk around Callaway has been kind of wild. “He’ll be No. 2 on the depth chart by the end of the year,” some comments read. “Man, 600 or 700 yards from him would be great,” others chime in. One observer adds: “He seems to be the real deal we hoped Tre’Quan Smith might be, and he’s looked the part from Day 1.”
We need to tap the brakes a little, or at least do some research to see if his performance was as impressive as advertised. So I put together a list of the 17 wide receivers who have started their NFL careers with the Saints since 2006, and slimmed down the sample size to those who appeared in at least 8 regular season games while catching 20 or more passes as rookies. That gives an idea of rookies who played a fairly visible role in the offense (to date, Kenny Stills is the only first-year receiver in the Sean Payton era to appear in 16 regular season games). This left me with nine names to compare against each other, eliminating this group as non-qualifiers:
- Adrian Arrington
- Dan Arnold
- Deonte Harris
- Jalen Saunders
- Juwan Johnson
- Lance Moore
- Lil’Jordan Humphrey
- Tommylee Lewis
First let’s start with Callaway as our point of reference.
