On Friday, 27 NFL teams passed on enigmatic wide receiver Josh Gordon as he floated through waivers, one day after the Patriots released him, and about a week after New England placed him on injured reserve with a knee injury. At age 28, Gordon caught just 20 passes on 36 targets for 287 yards and a touchdown in six games. That put him on pace for 40 receptions for 574 yards and two touchdowns on the season in a passing offense that has been uncharacteristically off-structure all season.
Whether the Seahawks present Gordon with a different outcome remains to be seen. Seattle head coach Pete Carroll said Friday that Gordon won’t play Sunday against the Buccaneers. Most likely, his Seahawks debut will come against the 49ers on Monday, Nov. 11, making an NFC West battle royale all the more interesting.
“He’s just a unique player,” Carroll told local media soon after the acquisition was official. “I’ve said it a million times to you guys that we’re always looking for guys that have something special about them. We need to find out. … He’s a big-play guy. He’s been able to really stretch the field. Those that I know have worked with him and coached him, they rave about his talent and his play-making ability.”
This much we know — even with the greatest quarterback in NFL history throwing him the ball in 2019, Gordon wasn’t the big-play machine he had been before. He didn’t seem to have the same level of acceleration he’d had in previous years. Whether that was a function of age, injuries, or lack of consistent playing time over the years (Gordon has missed a ton of playing time since 2012 with several suspensions for substance abuse), even when he did get open deep — as he did on the following play against the Redskins’ zone defense in Week 5 — he and Brady just weren’t on the same page.
That said, there are a couple interesting components to Gordon’s potential fit in Seattle. First, he’s now playing with a quarterback in Russell Wilson who seems determined to play at an MVP level no matter who’s on the field. Second, one of the guys Wilson now has on the field, rookie receiver DK Metcalf, mirrors Gordon’s attributes in a lot of ways, as I noted in my pre-draft evaluation:
Like Josh Gordon, Metcalf is a rare physical specimen who has the potential to beat top-level cornerbacks based purely on his physical attributes. It’s an interesting myth that these types of players can’t beat NFL coverage — Metcalf absolutely outpaced some of the best defenders in the NCAA, and he can do the same in the short term at the next level. If he’s allowed to expand his route tree, he could be the best receiver — and one of the best players — in this class.
Alhough Metcalf entered the NFL with a limited route palette (one reason he was selected with the 64th overall pick in the 2019 draft when his athletic gifts alone could have set him at a higher mark), he has, like Gordon, made developments in that area. Metcalf caught two touchdown passes in Seattle’s 27-20 win over Atlanta’s beleaguered defense last Sunday, and on Wednesday, offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer made sure to credit Metcalf for these all-important developments.
When asked where Metcalf has shown the most growth, Schottenheimer answered, “Probably the routes that he can run. When we first got him, again, you come out of the offense at Ole Miss, and you’re wondering what exactly he can run, what he can do. The sluggo [slant-and-go] was a good example of it. The little stick route that he caught when we went fast in the end zone. He just found the void. That’s just him playing football. Probably that would be the biggest thing. There’s not a route that we’re really not comfortable with him running. That allows us to move him around and put him at different spots.”
The sluggo concept Schottenheimer talked about was an incompletion in the end zone, but Metcalf absolutely basted cornerback Blidi Wreh-Wilson on the play.
And each of Metcalf’s two touchdowns were simply examples of the rookie finding the open gaps in Atlanta’s defense, which was all too willing to present a coverage bust in the red zone.
C’mon, guys. At least try to present a resistance.
So, let’s say that Gordon is healthy enough to go in Seattle’s offense, but not quite at a level where he can kill opposing defenses as he once did. He still presents an interesting conundrum to defenses that already have to deal with Wilson throwing darts to Metcalf and Tyler Lockett, who is the most efficient receiver, pound for pound, in the NFL over the past two seasons. Gordon would work well in short and intermediate concepts, as a tight end would. He has the size and separation ability to be an immediate asset if used correctly.
However, if Gordon is at any point able to get back to his old explosive ways, Seattle’s offense becomes just about unstoppable. It will be up to Schottenheimer and Carroll to throw out their conservative modus operandi and let Wilson blow things up with his acumen for precision shot plays. At his peak, and when he’s managed to stay out of trouble, Gordon is just about illegal. And if Seattle starts dialing up two-man concepts with Gordon and Metcalf, that could go a long way to cementing postseason status for a team whose defense has fallen off the map.
I did a tape breakdown on Gordon for Sports Illustrated in 2014, the year after he caught 87 passes for a league-leading 1,646 yards and nine touchdowns with Jason Campbell, Brandon Weeden and Brian Hoyer as his quarterbacks. With three below-average players throwing him the football, and in an overall offense that was one of the league’s worst, Gordon tore enemy defenses apart — and he did so with a route awareness that was rudimentary at best. That season included a game in which he caught seven passes on 10 targets for 151 yards and a touchdown … against the Patriots.
“He was a monster then, and he’s still a monster now,” Patriots linebacker Dont’a Hightower said last September when New England acquired Gordon in a trade from Cleveland. “He’s a tremendous athlete, a great receiver. Glad to have him.”
But stats and quotes only go so far when describing a receiver who can blast a defense apart to this degree if he’s healthy and at full speed. At that point, the tape tells the rest of the story to a voluminous degree.
Gordon may not be the league’s most advanced route-runner, but he has taken steps to improve in this department — especially when it comes to adjusting outside the parameters of the original route. This 34-yard touchdown against the Colts in Week 5 of last season was Gordon’s first touchdown reception with the Patriots, and Brady’s 500th touchdown pass overall. What Gordon does to cornerback Christopher Milton on the hither-and-yon route, and how he adjusts in coverage against Milton and safety Matthias Farley is simply unfair.
“That was a great play Josh made, jumping over the top of two defenders,” Brady said after the game. “It tells you the kind of confidence I have in him in a very short period of time. He’s earned it, and I’m happy to see him make that play.”
Gordon was just happy to be part of something major after all the chances he had lost.
“To catch any pass from Tom is amazing, let alone some history-making catch or pass,” he said of the play. “For him, I told him congratulations, and I know there’s many more for him to come. Hopefully he’s got a lot more left in him. I’m pretty sure he does. So I’m looking forward to that. And the next history point to make for him, I hope to be a part of it, so it’s awesome.”
In Week 14 against the Dolphins, Gordon took a simple crosser and used his short-area speed to eviscerate three Miami defenders before turning upfield for a 21-yard gain.
And as Packers defensive back Tramon Williams discovered on the following 55-yard touchdown in Week 9 last season, you’d better pick your moment to try and wrap up Gordon in the open field. With his combination of size, speed and power, if you miss at all, you’re done.
The 55-yarder below against the Bears in Week 7 of 2018 isn’t a touchdown, but it is a 55-yard play in which Gordon smokes the bail coverage with a quick slant inside, eludes multiple tacklers in the open field, and only goes down when he’s doubled.
“I had him matched up on a one-on-one, and he just went up and got it,” Brady said of this play, which happened despite a hamstring injury that had limited Gordon in practice. “We had a good play-action pass, I had great protection, he was running kind of a deep in-cut, [so I] tried to throw it. He caught it in stride, ran over the safety, and got down to about the 1-yard line. It was an incredible play.”
What’s especially interesting about the play is that it came about after offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels had altered the responsibilities for his receivers because Rob Gronkowski was out with an injury. Perhaps presaging his short-term role in Seattle, the Patriots had Gordon playing a role similar to a tight end, and Gordon had no issue with that.
Carroll said that Gordon is “OK,” health-wise, so now, it’s a matter of getting him in the building, seeing what he can pick up in a hurry and getting him ready for a San Francisco defense that mirrors the defense Carroll once had, both in philosophy and personnel (hello, Richard Sherman) more than Carroll might like to be reminded.
At this point, if the 6-2 Seahawks want to set themselves apart, they’ll have to do it with their best player, and that’s obviously their quarterback. Adding Gordon in whatever capacity he can help in the short term would seem to be a clear acknowledgement of that fact, no matter which “balanced” philosophy Carroll and Schottenheimer might prefer.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar has also covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”
