Second- and third-year NFL players ready to break out in 2021: Offense edition

Wide receiver - Michael Pittman Jr.

Wide receiver – Michael Pittman Jr.

At USC, you saw Pitman Jr.'s numbers increase every single year and he left with 101 catches for 1,275 yards and 11 touchdowns as a senior, despite having a couple of other guys around him deserving of targets.

In particular, I will never forget that Utah game where he went up against day-two picks Jaylon Johnson and Julian Blackmon, among others, and absolutely destroyed them, skying over those guys and running away from them. With his dad being a former nine-year NFL veteran who averaged just over 1,000 scrimmage yards per season as a running back and won a Super Bowl, this guy has it in his bloodlines and you can see it in the way he plays.

It took a while for the youngster to make a name for himself in his rookie campaign, as he missed weeks four through six, due to surgery on a compartment leg syndrome, and caught just ten passes for less than 100 yards through the first four games he actually played in.

In kind of a swing game for the division at Tennessee, Pittman broke out, gaining 122 yards on nine opportunities, but he averaged just 2.7 catches for the rest of the regular season, before finally cracking the 100-yard mark again in their Wildcard loss at Buffalo.

A lot of this had to do with the re-emergence of T.Y. Hilton as Indy’s number one receiver to go with Philip Rivers’ way of spreading the ball around. Hilton and the Colts’ second-leading player in that category Zach Pascal are both coming back, but both to me are number two’s, looking at a nine-year veteran who has looked banged up or just old for the better part of the last two years and a rather limited slot option.

I really believe the Colts are ready for a new WR1 and Pittman has the ability to fit that mold. In year one, he just cracked the 500-yard mark on 40 receptions (61 targets), but his role was very limited. Most of his production came on shallow crossers, as they tried to clear space underneath and let him go to work, which he routinely took advantage of.

They also targeted him on slants or square-ins and put the ball in his hands on a few reverses. However, with Philip Rivers in year 17, we rarely saw the Colts throw the ball outside the numbers or really down the field, unless it was one of those high-arcing balls to Hilton on post routes. Their new guy under center has his own issues that he still has to get over, but arm strength isn’t one of them, and I believe Pittman will likely become his favorite target as the receiver takes a step forward in year two.

What stood out to me whenever I put Pittman's USC tape on was how natural he was playing the position. He was so well-versed in his release packages, with much more nimble thought than you would expect at 6’4”, 223 pounds. He was able to snap off routes really well by sitting in the chair and uses his frame even better to create throwing windows.

You saw some of those things his first year as a pro, even though his route-tree was heavily limited. He ran so many shallow crossers, especially from reduced splits, which is why opponents put their corners shaded in inside press alignment, to make it tough for him to get into those routes, but he did an excellent job of just leaning in a little bit and flattening the angle, as well as creating that late separation with his hands, when defenders tried to kind of undercut him.

Because the Colts tested outside corners so little down the sideline, especially with Pittman, his job of running slants and digs was made a lot tougher, but he showed the strength to throw those guys off balance and create that inside access for himself.

Philip Rivers was pretty inconsistent with expecting the rookie receiver to curl up or work towards space on his routes, which resulted in at least half of his four drops last season, from the tape I re-watched.

His ball-tracking and catch technique are outstanding, and he displays strong hands in traffic and the ability to use his body as a shield, with a guy on his back. What surprised me a little bit - someone who liked this guy a lot as a draft prospect - was the juice he had, not only to make corners lose phase on him as he crosses the field, but also after the catch.

With his height, it comes off as more gliding speed I thought, but there was another gear when the ball touched his hands and he beat defenders to the sideline at a much higher rate than you’d expect. To go along with that, he is a big dude who's difficult to bring down when he has momentum, punishing opponents waiting to just push him out of bounds on several occasions.

Therefore, 58.3 percent (!) of his receiving production came after the catch. And this guy is a great blocker, who can cover up corners, but also shoot inside on safeties or even get his hands on linebackers as the front-man of bunch sets and stuff like that.

Pittman will never feature the greatest change of direction and his chest presents a pretty large surface area for DBs to land their hands, which led to him having a little bit of an issue running routes towards the middle of the field against inside leverage early on, as he needs to learn threatening DBs to open up the wrong way or at least lean over enough, so he can gain that inside access.

Yet, he did show improvements in that area already as a route, with surprisingly quick feet, and while Carson Wentz has work to do in terms of cleaning up his fundamentals and playing less hero-ball, I expect him to open up Pittman’s route-tree and give him chances to win down the field, where he excels at boxing out smaller defenders and high-pointing the ball.

I can’t remember a single pass 20+ air yards down the field from this past season. Wentz didn’t always work great with Alshon Jeffery, but personal relationships might have been a bigger factor there and Pittman is a much more dynamic player at this point in his career.

He was highly successful as a true X in college and I expect him to come closer to his senior numbers than what he did as a rookie at that spot, while Parris Campbell will be their professional shallow cross guy.

maybe don’t let 58 get matched up on Pittman Jr pic.twitter.com/eYsPbnUA20

— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) November 22, 2020