RENTON, Wash. — When former Mississippi receiver DeKaylin Zecharius “DK” Metcalf ran a 4.33 40-yard dash at the 2019 scouting combine, that was the shot heard ‘round the world for his NFL prospects. Metcalf had just 26 receptions for 569 yards and five touchdowns in 2018 before a neck injury cut his season short, and given the book on him as a gigantic mega-athlete with a limited grasp of the nuances of the position, if Metcalf hadn’t blown up the combine as he did, he may have been seen by analysts as a second-round talent, when the tape showed elements of a top-level “X” receiver—the one guy on your roster who can beat the NFL’s best island cornerbacks and shred coverages with his physical attributes.
Turns out, the NFL did see him as a second-round prospect, despite his physical gifts and the tape that showed Metcalf as a potentially dominant target. The guy I had as my 12th overall player in this draft class lasted until the final pick in the second round, when the Seahawks selected him.
The primary reason Metcalf dropped past public perception of his abilities? 20-yard shuttle and three-cone performances in the bottom percentile that would confirm one’s perception of Metcalf as a straight-line speed guy and nothing else, if one was already headed in that analytical direction.
While it’s true that Metcalf’s route palette in college was limited to straight vertical stuff with the occasional deep curl thrown in, there may already be more to the story than that. Mississippi receivers coach Jacob Peeler recently said on Seattle radio that Metcalf did more in practice than he was asked to do in game situations.
“That’s the one thing a lot of people ask me, going through this process.” Peeler recalled. “These are things he did every day at practice. If you watch him run routes, and I know people are trying to find something to flaw him on. Because when you saw pictures of him—he’s got the height and everything else, so they’re trying to find something bad about him. The system we were running at the time, that’s what was called for during games. But you’ll see him—he runs slants, digs, comebacks, curls… you name it. He does it at top-level talent, and those will be things that fans will get to see once he gets there. But that’s something I never really questioned with him. He is 6’4”, he is 225, so he has some things where big guys are going to be limited, but he was a tremendous asset to our offense. We were sitting at 5-2 when he had his injury, and we finished at 5-7.”
So, the obvious question is, if Metcalf could do all those things, why wasn’t he?
“Just the ebbs and flows of the game,” Peeler said. “He did some of that in games—he wasn’t just running post and go routes. But his position—at the “X” position—that was the vertical aspect of that position, and he was the best at that.”
Metcalf also worked this offseason with longtime receivers coach Jerry Sullivan, about whom Larry Fitzgerald once said, “He’s forgotten more football than most people have ever seen.” An excited Pete Carroll said after Metcalf’s first day of rookie minicamp on Friday that the work showed up on the field.
“Well, it’s almost like, what doesn’t, you know?” Carroll said when I asked him what excites him about Metcalf’s potential. “I mean, he’s big and he’s fast. He’s got really good feet, you know, and his catching range was exhibited today. And you know, we’ve got to figure it out, figure out where it is, maybe even more unique than we thought coming in. So, we just develop it as we go. But big and really fast and the catching range was really obvious today.”
I then asked Carroll where Metcalf’s route understanding is versus where the Seahawks are going to need it to be.
“He’s been coached up well, he had a tremendous off season working with Jerry Sullivan, one of the great receiver coaches in the history of the NFL. And I’m not taking anything away from where he was. I just know what we’re seeing right now. We’re seeing the guy work really hard at it, getting down and getting in and out of his breaks and stuff. Yeah, he looks like he’s ready to compete.”
What I saw in the Seahawks’ rookie minicamp was a receiver far smoother through his route cuts than one would imagine. Metcalf is never going to be an elite short-area guy who breaks cornerbacks down with option routes from the slot. But at 6’3” and 228 pounds, that’s not what you want from a prototypical “X” receiver—from that guy, you want someone who can create separation at the line of scrimmage, body defenders through the first parts of his routes, and create plays with a silly catch radius and the ability to create yards after the catch.
The agility drills were decent, but decent is good enough with all his other attributes.
Check, check, check. Metcalf proved that he could make catches beyond the perimeter of the average receiver with a sideline dive on a quick out, and a jump ball in which he made his defender look like he was in a different zip code. As far as the cuts to separate, he’s perfectly fine as long as he sinks into his routes and uses momentum to accelerate–the off-season work shows up there. And on another play, he absolutely raked cornerback Simeon Thomas out of his area with an aggressive move to come back to the ball. The combination of strength and cutting speed brought Dez Bryant to mind. And his outside move to fake to an inside quick slant is an absolute killer—on plays like that, it’s easy to see how, per Sports Info Solutions, he had a 100% Positive Play Rate against zone coverage in 2018.
Things got even showier on Saturday, when Metcalf caught five would-be touchdown passes on deep routes, boxing out and racing past cornerbacks who didn’t seem to know what to do with him. He also ran skinny slants and quick outs for receiver screens in which he wasn’t targeted, but this was more evidence that this is a player who can do more than people think. And on Sunday, he showed the ability to move from a quick out route to a zone-beater underneath, adjusting to a scrambling quarterback.
If this guy is seriously limited as a route-runner, I certainly didn’t see it, and I was looking for it.
When I saw the outside fake to the inside route on Friday, it occurred to me that I’d seen it before–when Metcalf’s Rebels faced Alabama last season. This is a run play, but watch how he sells the outside move to the slant, placing himself to make a quick catch and burn upfield.
Ole Miss’ first play against Alabama was all about Metcalf when he torched cornerback Saivion Smith on a vertical route. This is pure speed and wingspan to bring in the pass from quarterback Jordan Ta’amu, and this is where Metcalf looks the part of the “X” receiver at the NFL level—the guy no cornerback wants to deal with at the second and third levels. But watch Metcalf’s footwork off the release, and you can see what Carroll is talking about. Smith was done before Metcalf even started running.
“Anytime I got a smaller corner, I’m going to use that to my advantage to get him,” Metcalf said at the combine. “Use my big body to go up and make them help me make the contested catch.”
Contested-catch receivers talk about “50-50” balls in which there’s half a chance they’re going to get the completion even when a defender is draped all over them. Metcalf joked about “99-1” balls in which “The one percent I’m not coming down with it, it may be a bad [throw] by the quarterback.”
Seahawks offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer told me Sunday that while Metcalf’s measurements are “different in a weird, strange, freaky way,” there’s also work to do.
“I think just his whole game,” Schottenheimer said. “Obviously, he’s big, strong, and athletic—he can jump and high-point the ball. We know all the physical stuff—it’s just about him developing into a complete receiver. The route tree, all the different routes he can run; there are so many nuances to learn. How to attack coverages… a lot of times in spread offenses, they go so fast, they’re just running plays. We probably have more adjustments off the routes, where, ‘Oh, if they do this, I have to do that.’ I wouldn’t pinpoint one thing. We see him as a very, very talented young man we can help to get better. It’s going to require him to continue to work as hard as he did in this camp.”
The rough spots show up on his college tape in a few different ways.
On this incompletion against Alabama, Metcalf shows less of a plan downfield, and this is something that happened too often with him at the collegiate level. Though he’s more than athletic enough to beat defenders with those physical gifts, smarter guys who understand how to get inside position will vex him until he learns to body his way through that kind of obstruction.
And on this comeback, Metcalf isn’t as aware as he needs to be of where he is on the field, stepping out of bounds to negate any potential catch. What you have to like here, though, is his ability to get away from the coverage. Metcalf does show potential for more elevated route concepts when he gets more reps that way.
Still, the general impression you get from Metcalf’s new coaches is that they’re more than happy to have him in the fold–hyperbole is common when it comes to new players early in the process, but you rarely see it at this level, and unanimously so.
“He had a great weekend,” Carroll concluded on Sunday, as rookie minicamp came to a close. “He really did. He had the opportunity to catch balls of all different kinds all over the field. Down the field of course, he was really comfortable with all the long ball stuff. Everything we did with him, he was very comfortable with. I know that everybody’s wondering about this route tree thing and all that now, and I don’t see that being a factor. He looks like he’s very well-versed, been coached. And I’ve said before, he had really good work that he did since the season was over with the guys that he worked with. Jerry Sullivan is an extraordinary coach and he came in here ready to go and in good shape–he ran fast and he looked good, hung through all of it.
“So, it’s really an exciting first introduction.”
It is, and it’s the next phase in the process for a player whose liabilities and limitations were clearly overplayed in the pre-draft analysis process. It’s DK Metcalf’s job to prove the doubters wrong, time after time, at the NFL level.
