Buffalo Rumblings
Despite the pre-draft naysayers, Coleman’s production is promising after only eight games
The most predominant criticisms about Buffalo Bills rookie wide receiver Keon Coleman have rang loud since the team elected to trade down out of the first round and select the former Florida State product with the 33rd overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.
“Can he separate from man coverage?”
“Why wasn’t he more productive in college?”
“Isn’t the 40 yard dash time concerning?”
The concerns rang loud even before the pick was made simply due to the fact that the Bills traded down with the Kansas City Chiefs as the first of their two maneuvers — who promptly selected the historically speedy wide receiver Xavier Worthy out of Texas.
One thing that not even the most ardent Keon Coleman detractors could deny was that the 6’4”, 215-pound transfer from Michigan State had skills. They were on display when Coleman put up a dazzling gauntlet drill at the NFL Scouting Combine and they showed up in highlight reels. By that point, he had shown two skills in particular that have translated well on his NFL journey thus far:
Catching technique and yards-after-catch ability.
Even if Coleman never became an alpha “WR1” in the NFL (and very few draft selections do), a player can have a long and productive career off just those two traits. Add to that the fact that Coleman is a willing and physical blocker, and you have a recipe for long-term, gainful employment in the NFL.
Let’s take a quick look at these two Coleman traits:
Catching technique
Keon Coleman has received 23 catchable targets this year per FantasyPros. He’s caught 21 of them and is credited with two drops. That’s a 91.3% catch rate on catchable passes. For league-wide context, here are some other figures, sorted by receivers with between 23 and 30 catchable targets:
It’s generally assumed that degree of difficulty on catches increases as distance from the line of scrimmage increases over a meaningful sample size. Sure, you’ll have some wide-open targets 30 yards down the field on occasion where your job as a receiver is to Chris Watson the ball and just catch the punt, but catch rate decreases...
