1093: A Solid Wide Receiver Class

**JJ Zachariason** (0:02)
This is The Late-Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zachariason.
What's up everyone, it's JJ Zachariason. In this episode 1093 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. You've now heard episodes on the quarterback and running back classes. To wrap up this series, we've got one more, and that's at Wide Receiver.
As I do each year, I picked the brain of my friend, Matt Harmon, for today's episode. He's an analyst over at Yahoo, and he's the owner of Reception Perception, a methodology that he uses for charting wide receivers. We discuss a ton of players in this year's class, and as usual, Matt brings the heat. Now, before getting to that interview, I need to send another reminder, check out The Late-Round Prospect Guide. It's 170 pages of analytical information about this year's class, and includes information on second year players as well. All for $19.99. And if you get the guide before the NFL Draft happens, you'll get the post draft version of that guide just hours after the NFL Draft ends. It'll be emailed to you. So check it all out, lateraound.com. Now, here's the interview with my pal, Matt Harmon.
Matt, you're on the show every year at this point. I think this is like year four or something like that, of you doing the prospecting stuff for the wide receivers. So a lot of people who listen to the show know about Reception Perception. But if they don't, for whatever reason, explain what you do with Reception Perception, why it's so important to this wide receiver evaluation process.

**Matt Harmon** (1:37)
Yeah. So for Reception Perception, what I do is over an eight game sample for NFL players and college prospects. When enough film is available on the college prospects, I go and I chart every single snap, every single route that they run over that eight game sample. I chart a bunch of different data points, mostly at what matters is the route data, the success rate versus coverage, which is how often they're getting open, executing their assignments, separating, etc. On those individual in particular routes against man zone, press coverage. I also chart alignment. That's not just slot outside, whether they're off the ball, on the ball.
It's really try to give you the full picture of what a wide receiver is. In addition to some metrics like contested catch data, what they're doing in space from a tackle breaking perspective, I think is really important when we're starting to look at individual receiver archetypes and why I think this matters is because or why I thought it mattered 12 years ago when I started doing this for NFL and college prospects, is that the goal is to try as best as we can and it obviously is not a completely possible endeavor because that's not how football works, but try as best as we can to isolate the wide receiver from surrounding variables because you know this, as somebody that is knee deep in production, is that production obviously has to come from a lot of other variables going the right way.
Everything needs to happen in a certain way for a wide receiver to get that production. Obviously, those outside variables matter when we're looking for how does this guy produce? Is he going to be a viable fantasy option? But even the good stats, like yards per outrun, which is a great stat. Obviously, things need to go right for the receiver to get those yards. The receiver needs to go, things need to go right for the receiver to get those targets. So I think truly the only way you can really isolate a player from all the surrounding variables is to watch every single snap, watch every single route and try to chart that as best as you can. So really, in one way, Reception Perception is just like me collecting and showing you my work from the last 12 years that I've been doing this so that we can compare individual players to each other, classes to each other, and everything like that.

**JJ Zachariason** (3:46)
Can we also have a really quick discussion? This can be a minute long, but you mentioned it.

**Matt Harmon** (3:51)
Doubt it, but sure.

**JJ Zachariason** (3:52)
Yeah, it's never a minute long.
I feel like there is this notion out there whether you're coming from, and I even opened up the prospect guide with this discussion this year in the prospect guide. But talking about how film lies, talking about how numbers lie, guys, they both lie. It's up to the answer. We're trying to directionally get to the right place, right? And that's what Reception Perception is doing. It's taking things to a different level in order to directionally get to the right place. It's not to say that everything I do from a production standpoint is going to be flawless and that it's going to be right and that the result is going to end up a certain way. And the same thing with you. What I think is important is that there are different methodologies. I talked to Matt Waldman on Perspectives that dropped last week.