Top 10 wide receivers in the 2021 NFL Draft

#4 2021 NFL Draft Prospect: Rashod Bateman (Minnesota)

6’ 1”, 210 pounds; JR

Rashod Bateman

Despite a loaded 2018 wide receiver recruiting class, Rashod Bateman found himself among the top 400 overall names and quickly made a name for himself with the Gophers. As a freshman, he went for just over 700 receiving yards and six touchdowns and for as much recognition as Tyler Johnson got ahead of the 2019 seaso.

Bateman emerged as the true big-play threat for Minnesota’s passing game, as he finished with over 1300 yards and 13 touchdowns on the season, while being named a first-team All-Big Ten selection. After initially intending to sit out the 2020 campaign, he did play in five games, averaging almost 100 yards per week, but with the drop-off in the program’s success, ended up opting out a couple of games prematurely anyway.

This guy presents easy acceleration off the ball and offered more of the vertical stretch for Minnesota than Tyler Johnson did during his steady career with the Gophers. I really like the way Bateman uses hesitation releases before taking off along the sideline. He does an excellent job overall of setting up his defender with the way he may stem his routes one way and then crosses that guy’s face.

He is much more elusive as a route-runner than you would expect for a rather long guy. Bateman really ate on deep in-breaking routes at Minnesota, where he keeps his shoulder vertical before creating separation on his breaks, and then he is a threat to cut across the field and go the distance.

I love the way he slides inside, then attacks vertically, to be able to create space when he does break to the middle of the field. And when he is matched up with the corner in cover-three, he also runs that same route with an outside release and then cuts underneath the corner, to where that guy can’t even see him until it’s too late.

Bateman also does a nice job finding space, after the initial route is dead and he understands when to slow down, as the corner blitzes and the safety caps over the top or the corner shoots down into the flats to replace somebody and now there’s that big cover-two window at the sideline.

While it may not look as electric as it does with some other smaller receivers, Bateman has that gliding speed and when safeties play flat-footed in quarters coverage, he can run right by those guys on skinny posts or seam routes. He also has a couple of filthy post-corner routes on tape off that, where he has defenders spinning his head around. Bateman’s average depth of target in 2019 stood at 16.7 yards and he averaged more than 20 yards per grab.

To go with the smooth route-running, Bateman has excellent body control and focus, while being an alpha with the ball in the air and having dependable hands overall. He has those long arms to reach over defenders’ heads in jump-ball situations and he deals pretty well with passes thrown slightly behind him as he breaks towards the post.

He had a couple of crazy one-handed grabs in 2019, against Rutgers and South Dakota State. And then he made an absolutely ridiculous catches with a defender right on him versus Purdue. You often see him working across the field and quarterbacks targeting him in different windows, where he doesn’t worry about getting banged around.

Bateman was heavily involved in the RPO game, where those skills of going over the middle and being a problem to bring down were on display as well. He is a long strider, who uses that off-arm well to swat down the reach of tacklers trying pull him down, but he also has some wiggle to him in the open field and can pull the shoulder through contact.

For his career, he has broken 36 tackles on 147 total catches. Bateman wasn’t asked to contribute much as a blocker, being left with smoke routes or backing into slip screens on the backside a whole lot. But on the outside, you see him run corners off with outside release, and when he’s near the point of attack, he is looking for work.

Before anything else, Bateman has a little too much of a back-step before getting out of his stance for my taste, operating from a really wide stance. The biggest issue however is those focus drops he has, taking his eyes off the ball too quickly or being caught off guard at times, when the ball is put right on him, as he gets out of his breaks.

Overall, he dropped 19 passes on 166 catchable targets in his career. As a route-runner, he beats the drum and chops his feet too much when getting into harder breaks, working back to the quarterback for example. What I wanted to see from Bateman in 2020 was the ability to not let corners challenge him as much off the line and be more active with his hands.

But with lining up in the slot more, we didn’t get to see that. And while we have to consider he didn’t get to prepare for a proper season, with how late the Big Ten jumped in, he looked a little heavy and not quite as dynamic as usual last year. Therefore – and in part because the Minnesota program fell as much altogether – the Minnesota quarterback had a passer rating of around 50 on passes of 10+ yards going to his top receiver last season.

For me, Bateman has been WR4 all along. Looking at how fluid he is, that ability to track the ball, win at the catch point and create big plays on catch-and-run opportunities – all that makes him very desirable.

Even though he is only 21 years old, Bateman has played almost 1700 total snaps and after primarily lining up out wide, he was put a lot more in the slot last season, as long as he was available. So can play X or big slot day one and in an RPO-heavy offensive attack, he could be the primary target at both those spots, making him a true number one receiver in my opinion. He could go anywhere in the second half of round one.