00:00How sure are you that Stephon Diggs is going to play second fiddle
00:06to Terry McLaurin in targets and catches?
00:10McLaurin has been the alpha here.
00:12He's been the number one here forever.
00:13Really good player.
00:15Diggs' apex better than Terry's apex.
00:18First-team All-Pro, led the NFL in catches, 1,300-yard season,
00:22areas that McLaurin hasn't gotten to.
00:24But Terry's younger and theoretically still closer to the prime of his career,
00:28didn't have the injury that Stephon Diggs had a couple seasons ago
00:31that he's working his way all the way back from.
00:34I just think the way that Terry's used in the offense,
00:38X receiver, vertical threat, digging things out at 18 to 20 yards,
00:43sometimes the love of the game route where you're just running as fast as you can,
00:46as far as you can, opening some things up underneath,
00:49is going to maybe benefit Stephon Diggs and help him a little bit more than vice versa.
00:55And in the David Blau offense, at least watching it practice as much as I have,
00:59they have not thrown deep very much at all.
01:01They completed their first home run ball, I would say.
01:03Toby, would you agree with this?
01:05I think that Mariota pass yesterday on like a 40-yard double move to the end zone
01:10was legit the first deep ball we've seen in camp in six-plus days.
01:14Yeah, I mean, there have been a couple that maybe after scrambling around or whatever,
01:18they find something down the field, but like designed,
01:21trying to push the ball down the field more than 25 yards,
01:23I'd say that's the only one, I think it's going to be horizontal,
01:26which is not crazy to think about with Ben Johnson's offense,
01:29short, intermediate, more than long.
01:31So if that's true, why couldn't Diggs lead this team in catches?
01:36This is what Logan Paulson had to say.
01:37He was on the show yesterday here on Grant and Danny
01:40talking about the usage for Diggs versus McLaurin.
01:43I think it's something, at least as of right now,
01:45you know, they made this signing, what, like an hour ago, two hours ago?
01:48So I'm still kind of working through it, but that's kind of the way I see it.
01:50I think I see Terry as this guy that's going to be a little bit more
01:53kind of a traditional vertical route tree,
01:56kind of a little bit more one-on-one basketball on the perimeter,
01:59kind of if we like to match up with a set of rift.
02:01And then Stephon Diggs is the guy that you're kind of saying,
02:03okay, he's the inside guy.
02:05He's the number three receiver in certain concepts.
02:07He's got to match up on a linebacker.
02:08Let's exploit that.
02:09Oh, okay, we're going to use him in motion.
02:10He's got to run that choice or that option, like Grant was talking about.
02:13Like, that's kind of what it feels like to me.
02:15Like, he might be more of a, Stephon Diggs might be more of a driver of the offense
02:20while, you know, Terry McCormick is more like the knockout punch artist.
02:24And again, that role seems very natural for both of them
02:27because that's what Stephon Diggs did last year.
02:29And that's what Terry's done specifically the last two years here in Washington.
02:33To me, there's, I don't want to say no doubt because, of course, there's doubt,
02:36but I do think Diggs leads the team in catches.
02:39And I just look at kind of the number data on it.
02:432024, I don't want to say it's a wash because he was injured a bunch.
02:47So, too, was McCormick last year.
02:49But if you go over the last eight seasons,
02:51Stephon Diggs' low is 85 catches, which McCormick has equaled one time in his career.
02:57That's not what he does.
02:58He is a different kind of receiver.
03:00And to me, it's like a, who's the better hitter?
03:02Just top of your head.
03:03The guy that hits 280 with 15 homers
03:06or the guy that hits 220 with 40.
03:08And you're going to go, well, the 40 guy.
03:10Well, but that, you know, there's a lot of times he's going to come up
03:12and strike out with runners in scoring position.
03:13Wouldn't you rather have the ball in play?
03:14It's the fun debate about sports, about baseball.
03:16There are different kinds of guys.
03:18And Logan touched on it.
03:19This is a horizontal offense.
03:20It's a quick-release offense.
03:22The guy that works underneath really well is Stephon Diggs.
03:25I think he gets more catches.
03:26The yardage part of it's going to be interesting.
03:28I think they'll both end up in a similar neighborhood.
03:30But I do think Diggs gets more catches than McCormick,
03:32and I don't think that means he's better.
03:34I just think they're different.
03:35Yeah, if the targets and catches, though, for Diggs are up over McLaurin,
03:39it's going to be interesting to see how he reacts to that
03:42because he makes over twice as much.
03:44And this has been his room, his offense, his team for a long, long time.
03:50I think if you're an odds maker, if you're FanDuel or something,
03:55you have to have McLaurin still as the projected guy ahead of him
03:58based on what he makes, based on what Blau has said.
04:00He's talked about 10 targets per game, offense going through him.
04:04Well, that's how a lot of the guys around the league now do it.
04:07Like, Sean McVay's offenses go through Puka Nakua.
04:11That's kind of how you start.
04:12Back in the day in basketball, you watch a first possession with a Shaq team.
04:16He'd always touch the ball in the first possession, kind of inside out,
04:19where he's going to either – he's got the ball on his fingertips
04:23because they're too big.
04:24The ball just gets stuck in his hand.
04:26Looks like a tennis ball.
04:26Exactly.
04:27So he's, like, looking around, and he's going to cut her off his hip,
04:30and he bounce passes or whatever.
04:32In the McVay offense, everything's about Puka Nakua.
04:35Kevin O'Connell, the game plan every week when he would sit down with his quarterback is,
04:40all right, we're throwing the ball to Justin Jefferson 12 times.
04:42Now let's figure everything else out.
04:45If Blau's going to do that, that guy he's set all offseason is Terry McLaurin.
04:50This changes the math a little bit, though, having Stephon Diggs roll in here
04:54as your wide receiver, too.
04:56And I just think, to your point, like, if he is the guy –
04:59you've seen Terry for years run a lot of that stuff.
05:02The meshes, the crosses, the drags, you know, the line of scrimmage.
05:06I've seen him throughout camp, now six practices.
05:08I've been out there for every one of them.
05:10He's been catching some of the screens.
05:11He's been the guy that they get open on some of those design looks at the line of scrimmage.
05:16Does that become Diggs?
05:17And now he is the traditional X, like, pushing things down the field?
05:21If so, it just stands to reason you're going to throw it to Diggs more.
05:25You look at some of these numbers like catch percentage, right,
05:28which can sometimes be misleading stats because if you throw nothing but bubble screens,
05:32you're going to have a high catch percentage.
05:33And if you're going deep every time, it'll be low.
05:35But Diggs last year was buoyed by a ridiculous catch percentage,
05:40a.k.a. lesser depth of target, more makeable layup kind of throws.
05:44It was running back-esque.
05:46When you think about a running back might have 42 targets and 39 or 40 catches,
05:50meaning how many of those balls are just slung out to them in the flat.
05:53There's not a defender around.
05:54It's a dump off.
05:56You know, they're running a little choice route, and it's a four-yard throw.
05:59So your catch percentage should be pretty close to 100,
06:01whereas if you're an X like McLaurin and you're targeted way down the field
06:05on a 20-yard square out or something.
06:07You're in the low 60s, right?
06:08And that's kind of another way I'm using the math here to kind of get to where I want to
06:12go.
06:13If they both got 120 targets, Diggs would have more catches based on his career catch percentages,
06:19the different kinds of routes, et cetera.
06:21If McLaurin's got 10 more targets, you still have more catches for Diggs.
06:24If he's got 15 more targets, 20.
06:26So now all of a sudden you could go 120 targets McLaurin, 100 targets for Diggs.
06:30You're still prioritizing the guy that can do more.
06:33They could take bigger body blows against the defense, more knockout punches to borrow from Logan.
06:38But you still have more success in terms of completed passes to Diggs.
06:43I think that's where kind of the math that I'm using to talk about this is coming from.
06:49This is not a referendum that, oh, man, we got a guy that's better than Terry.
06:53He's different than Terry.
06:54That's what's so exciting to me is now the guy that I think is really good at running some of
06:59those slants
06:59and yards after the catch and some of those, as you said, those 20-yard square ends,
07:03maybe going deep a little bit more,
07:04instead of we got to force-feed a guy that's not a force-feed guy.
07:08He's not Jamar Chase.
07:09He's not Puka Nakua.
07:11Now I think it opens up everybody.
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