Hello, welcome to the PFF Fancy football podcast. I'm your host, Ian Hartitz. And today we continue our fancy file series with a look at DK Metcalf, Tyrolocca and the Seahawks passing attack that was cooking for the first half season of last year.

You guys might have heard, you know, Russ cooking, maybe the most overused metaphor. I guess it's the right word in the entire NFL last season. It's all good. I use it myself. I'm sure you have as well. And it was true. We did see Russ end up at the career high 558 pass attempts. And honestly, those first eight games in the year were so special.

We talked about the Calamary, a fancy file this podcast, how before he injured a shoulder, he was on pace for the most fancy points for game ever by a quarterback. Russ was right behind him until he fell off not because of injury, just because of defense is kind of catching up to what they were doing.

And just realized people, I know that Russ is kind of an easy guy to make fun of his awfully corny, you know, the Mr unlimited, the magic concussion healing water from back in the day. There's been a lot of things about Russ, you know, I guess being on team sex and I was see our eyes maybe made him a little

cooler in the eyes of the Gen Zers out there and all that. Whatever you think of the guy though, and I know he came out this off season said that there was agent said or whoever that he considered himself a top five, you do ever. We can chill on that. But in terms of what he's been since he came into the league in 2012.

And he was not a top five quarterback. I mean, this worse you the sea ox have had with Russell Wilson was in 2017 when he had nine wins seven losses and 34 touchdowns is eerily similar to Tom Brady's career with the Patriots in terms of he just never had a bad year.

Brady's worst year was also 97. That was the only season other than the, you know, 11 past 2008 campaign, we're towards ACL. That was the only year in 2002 that Brady had fewer than 10 wins and he led the league with 28 touchdowns through the air that year, just like Russ led the league with 34 passing touchdowns.

The one season he didn't reach double digit win. So basically point of this, you know, just intro the meccaf and lock it about Russ. This guy is anyone's idea of a complete stud elite quarterback, everyone would call him. And because of that, he's helped engineer top 11 scoring offense in eight of his nine seasons.

So the Russ Center, this is one of these situations where we can feel pretty good about this offense, putting up a lot of points. And once again, we have an offense that is awfully condensed around top two receivers. And why shouldn't it be because I mean DK Meccaf.

And another guy that you know, maybe gets a little bit of gripe here and there coming out. I mean, it's awfully shocking to see him go behind guys like Andy Isabella, you know, falling as far as he did and the draft to 64th overall in 2019. And he just, he's the prime example of us over thinking of prospect in terms of asking, hey, what can he do instead of what can he do.

So the route running concerns, those have been overblown from day one, you can check out Matt Harman's from Yahoo Sports always burning reception perception data on that or just wants to film. And I think it's one of these things where we talk about, you know, Lamar Jackson's and these mobile quarterbacks where, okay, they fact they face easier coverages schemes because defense has to be so worried about their, you know, mobility.

And the same thing with DK Meccaf, like his routes, I think are enhanced because of how much freaking fear he puts in the hearts and souls of these cornerbacks, but they have to worry about this dude running past them or just running straight over him because you just don't see monsters like Meccaf 632 and 28 pounds 4.332nd 40.

And you guys remember the pick of him and AJ Brown, just, you know, flexing with their shirts off. I mean, the fact that those Ole Miss teams couldn't put up more, you know, just remains one of the bigger mysteries of modern day college football, but basically, even if you don't want to necessarily crown Meccaf as like a top five top 10 real life receiver at this moment of time, which I don't think we necessarily should.

And we just look at him since entrain the league, there's an 80 wide receivers with at least 100 targets, Meccaf ranks 25th and receiving grade 20th and yards per out run. He does join AJ Brown, Adam Dealing, Mike Evans, Tyree Killing, Devote Adams as the only wide receivers with at least 20 receiving touchdowns over the past two years.

I'm just saying, I understand why, you know, on some top five, even top 10 wide receiver rankings, he's not on there just yet in terms of the total package with that said, you cannot make a list of the top field stretching wide receivers in the NFL, you cannot do a top two that does not include DK Meccaf.

I think Tyree Killing is fully deserving of that honor, and I'm not going to stay here and say Tyree Killing is the best field stretcher in the world, you know, could go and go into that unfortunate pitfall that my buddy slash co worker Anthony tree hash made for himself a couple of weeks ago.

But with Meccaf man, my goodness, when he goes down field, he is borderline unstoppable. I mean, Tyree K has 14 scores on pass it's only 20 yards over the past two years. Meccaf is right there behind him at 10. Nobody has more receptions on throws at least 30 yards down field.

So again, I understand if you want to hold off on crowning Meccaf as one of the best all around receivers in the league in terms of field stretching though there is nobody other than Tyree Killing better at the moment. The one negative we've seen with Meccaf is drops and this is why I remind her even though we're not talking about today, not the whole drops against the on tape Johnson because people, if you look at dropless, what you're going to see is a whole bunch of great receivers because drops tend to be more indicative of someone getting open a lot, then sucking out catching the football.

Including the playoffs over the past two years, the most drops in the league, DK Meccaf for 20 Michael Gallup for 20, Deontay Johnson with 18 Tyree Killing 18, Stefan Diggs was 17 Mike Evans was 16 is anyone holding those drops against Stefan Diggs.

I don't freaking think so before you come at me with the target totals, all of those guys have between 210 and 292 targets, digs is number one. So he's probably, you know, the most quote unquote, flow guy there.

And you know, we can talk about the on tape Johnson's difference in average target deaf compared to the guys, but interesting study from next gen stats that actually shows you that targets closer to a line of scrimmage historically produce a higher rate of drops because when you think about it, those are, you know, when you kind of have the ball coming out as hot as it is close to the line, that's where the, you know,

Miss accuracy can cause a bigger issue with the guy again, his hands on it either way, if you want to use drops as a real life stat to kind of Josie's receivers, absolutely fine, just realize we don't lose points for drops in fancy land.

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