Unlock More Content Like This With A
Footballguys Premium Subscription
"Footballguys is the best premium
fantasy football only site on the planet."
Matthew Berry, NBC Sports EDGE
Strange things happen in the NFL season. While the complete running back apocalypse probably goes down as the most peculiar occurrence of the 2015 rendition of the National Football League showing, the outrageous streak put together by Doug Baldwin is right near the top.
Long a solid player in the perennially contending Seattle Seahawks wide receiving corps, Baldwin never exactly stuffed the stat sheets. All the while, he was lauded for his fiery nature, and even went so far as to say if he played in a more pass heavy offense, the public would regard him as one of the best receivers in the league. Well, it turns out maybe he wasn’t so crazy to assert that.
On the back of a wild five game streak with multiple receiving touchdowns, Doug Baldwin is square in the middle of a career best season. Baldwin already has a career high 905 receiving yards and is tied with Allen Robinson for the season’s high in touchdowns with 13. With Russell Wilson peaking at the end of the season, and reaching a new pantheon of quarterback play, Baldwin is also demanding we take notice of the former undrafted Stanford receiver. As observers, we almost always sit back and wait for occurrences to regress to the mean of our expectations. Almost everyone expected Baldwin to cool off. The trouble is, he clearly had other plans, and just continues to stuff the stat sheet.
So what do we make of this sudden outburst of elite play by Doug Baldwin? Reception Perception breaks down three of his games (Ravens, Steelers, Vikings) in this hot streak to assess just what we have on our hands here.
Alignment Data
With a smaller physical profile, it’s no surprise that Doug Baldwin plays so exclusively from the slot. He took 81.1 percent of his snaps over the three-game sample size from the slot. Baldwin also sets up behind the line of scrimmage more often than not, with 68.2 percent of his snaps taking place there.
Good coaching staffs know what to do with their good players. The Seahawks found a comfortable role for Baldwin as their slot receiver when he made the team as a UDFA back in 2011, and never stretched him out of that. However, we should also be at a point in the football world where we don’t count that against a player’s evaluation. If a player is good in the role they are assigned, no matter what that is, it should not be spun as a negative.
Success Rate Versus Coverage and Route Analysis
No routes on the tree check in over 20 percent of Doug Baldwin’s 85 routes over the three-game sample. We’ve doled out praise all season for players, like Willie Snead for example, who run just about every route in the book. It looks like Baldwin fits that variety as well.
The Seahawks run a passing offense designed to fit Russell Wilson’s strengths a player. The designed bootlegs he runs are perfect for the slant route (18.8 percent) and the broken scrambles fit well when Baldwin runs a curl (11.8 percent). Yet, the true next step we watched Wilson take the last month and a half involved him playing more from the pocket and slicing teams with pristine accuracy.
Throughout the latter half of the season, the timing between Baldwin, who plays well in that section of the game, and his quarterback was outstanding. We watched as Wilson would crank a perfect pass for Baldwin as he broke free at the right time on the post (15.3 percent) or drop a deep pass in the buck on a nine route (14.1 percent).
In year’s past Baldwin always made plays in crucial moments on the scramble drill with Wilson. Now that his quarterback took a step forward from the pocket, and the receiver himself improved his timing as a route runner, it’s no wonder Baldwin exploded this year.
(SRVC denotes success rate versus coverage for each route. PTS indicates how many PPR fantasy points a receiver earned on each particular route)
Baldwin scored well on just about every route he ran frequently over the three-game sample size. One of the more interesting scores was his 58.3 percent SRVC on nine routes, which would fall above the NFL average for vertical patterns. You cannot truly pigeonhole Baldwin as just a run of the mill slot receiver when he can threaten a defense deep like that. He was productive on the nine route too collecting 20.9 PTS in three games. Baldwin has a legitimate big play element to his game.
His score on curls and posts illustrates that timing element mentioned earlier. One of the reasons that Reception Perception was so high on Michael Crabtree prior to this season in Oakland and when he was not highly regarded in free agency, was the element of timing his breaks demonstrated in excellent SRVC scores on curls and posts. Baldwin scored similarly to the Raiders receiver on both patterns, demonstrating his improving as a route runner. In order for slot receivers to elevate their production to mirror their out wide counterparts, they must maximize their abilities as route runner. IT appears Baldwin is inching closer by the game to that territory.
The one oddly discouraging note here was Baldwin’s lackluster below average scores on both slants (62.5 SRVC) and flat (61.5 SRVC) routes. These are the patterns we’d naturally assume he’d execute well, and he had done in the past, on Wilson bootlegs and movement plays outside the pocket. While some consistency here would help Baldwin, he does make up for the lack of routine separation by being an excellent after the catch player:
Baldwin’s open field attempts on 9.4 percent of his routes are above the league average, as his tackle-breaking rate. Much like his former teammate, Golden Tate, Baldwin is not a special athlete, but is aggressive and decisive with the ball in his hands.
Baldwin is more than adept at performing the tasks asked of him in the Seattle offense, and is firing on all cylinders. He deserves all the credit in the world. Yet, much like his slant and flat scores illuminate, there is some SRVC evidence that still paints him a tick below the league’s elite Reception Perception scorers:
(Red indicates the figure is below the NFL average, Green is above and Yellow is within one percentage point)
Baldwin’s SRVC score against zone is fantastic. A 79.2 percent mark is well above the league average, and demonstrates what a great player he became this season. Baldwin slicing through zone with great lower body quickness, and decisiveness. He’s also adept at the timing portions of the game to know where to sit down for his quarterback, or find the soft spot while Wilson scrambles. Baldwin also beats press off the line at a 72.7 percent SRVC score rate, which is solid for a receiver of his archetype. While not a world-class jam beater, Baldwin has the technique and aggression to get the job done.
The only hole to poke here is his slightly below average 60.5 percent SRVC against man. All the positives in this article and in his stats don’t change the fact that Baldwin does not have one elite tool in his arsenal. He is not a physically overwhelming specimen. As such, receivers can stick with him in man-to-man coverage at times. That will likely always be the case, and why analysts will always be on regression to the mean watch with this player. However, to his credit, Baldwin upped enough of the other facets of his game to render that one faulty score less of a worry.
Going Forward
Not many, if anyone, predicted this level of production from Doug Baldwin. Even in their heart of hearts, it’s hard to imagine Seattle even expected this. However, with Wilson balling out and Baldwin taking the necessary steps to improve his game in his fifth season in the league, he demands we take notice. The Reception Perception scores do indeed legitimatize the statistical production. Doug Baldwin executes his role as the slot and big play receiver with pristine precision.
It’s time to stop wondering when Doug Baldwin will regress to the mean. More like it’s time to adjust the mean expectations for him. The player demanded we take notice of his new status, and he has the Reception Perception scores to back it up.
Doug Baldwin may still not be one of the highest quality receivers in the league. However, in an era where we get to evaluate receivers’ quality sooner than ever before in their NFL careers, it looks like Baldwin enjoyed a legitimate breakout campaign here in his fifth season. He’s still far from an elder statesman among his peers.
The receiver potion is one of the most situation-dependent positions to prove themselves in the stat sheet. Perhaps that is what Doug Baldwin meant when he said we’d regard him as one of the league’s best in a pass heavy offense. Now that Russell Wilson vaulted Seattle to the top of the ranks of that type of team, we’re seeing Baldwin’s vision pan out. Perhaps Baldwin has always been a bit aggressive with his own projections, but he and his Reception Perception numbers demanded we take notice this season.