[FULL EPISODE] Do We Believe in These Receivers?

**James Koh** (0:01)
We've got our Taycan is loaded and ready.

**Matt Harmon** (0:03)
Absolutely dominant on deep routes, absolutely dominant on short routes.

**James Koh** (0:07)
The boys are backbanging.

**Matt Harmon** (0:08)
Excellent separation against ManCover. This is Reception Perception The Show.

**James Koh** (0:14)
Yo, what's cracking, everybody? James Koh, Matt Harmon here with you. You're listening to Reception Perception The Show. All right, Matt, today's theme is about wide receivers who could who could have a huge role in 2026 and whether or not we believe in them as players, as full time players, Parker Washington, Jayden Reed, Michael Wilson are the three guys that we will be discussing today. Can we start there and Duvall, man? Parker Washington last six of the regular season. This guy was incredible, right? Like seven targets, 4.7 receptions per game, 83 yards per game, three total touchdowns, nearly 18 yards per reception. I think that caught a lot of people by surprise. This guy was a big play threat. He was on a 1400 yard pace, the last six games of the regular season. And then he followed that up with a huge 12 targets, seven reception, 107 yard receiving game in the playoffs against Buffalo. What kind of player do we got here in Parker Washington?

**Matt Harmon** (1:16)
Yeah, you know this. I've always liked myself a little bit of Parker Washington. I liked him as kind of a sleeper in that 2023 NFL draft, called him kind of like a Golden Tate type of player, a little bit of like a Bud Light Golden Tate. And I think he actually really kind of became maybe full ABV Golden Tate last season. I'm actually pretty good. If you look back on the guys I've said is Bud Light this, Bud Light that, like I'm on Raw St. Brown is Bud Light, Cooper Cup. I actually maybe just need to stop talking Bud Light like these guys. Those guys, those are just actually turned into pretty good cops.

**James Koh** (1:50)
Exactly.

**Matt Harmon** (1:51)
If you think about it, because I would argue that St. Brown honestly probably is going to end up with a better career overall than Cooper Cup, which maybe not that peak 2021 season for Cooper Cup. But still, anyways, yada yada. Honestly, coming back around to Parker Washington, looking at his full reception perception charting data, I actually do think it's pretty comparable to Golden Tate. Now, one big important piece of context that I want to get out of the way here, with Parker Washington before we dive into some of his results and everything, is that he's a little bit of a difficult player to judge from a full season sample perspective. And what I mean by that is I don't think people realize that he was actually getting some pretty decent snap counts for this Jaguars team early on last season. He wasn't just a complete bench player that then came out of nowhere to get a lot of playing time in the back half of the year. There's no question his role and his involvement in the offense changed a lot. But this is a guy that was getting, again, some pretty decent snap counts early in the season, but it was actually more as a reserve outside receiver.
This is a new staff that was brought in here, and not only were they trying to figure out what to do with BTJ, they were trying to figure out what to do with Travis Hunter. They also signed D'Ami Brown, which was not a good signing, to be that third receiver. That left Parker Washington as the wide receiver for just like a backup guy.
Again, he did not clear a 40 percent slot rate until after Travis Hunter got hurt during the week nine buy, and he did not clear 60 percent snaps in the slot until week 15 So in total, in Reception Perception, because there's a mix of some games post that week 15 breakout to before that, when he was kind of this reserve outside receiver, he took 39.3 percent of his sampled snaps in the slot. He was another six percent in the backfield as well. Sometimes it's like a motion option, but occasionally they would line him up as a stationary threat in the backfield to get him some layup targets and things of that nature. He is really good with the ball in his hands, as we will discuss. But yeah, in his final four game sampled all after week 15, his rate of snaps off the ball went up to 62 percent in his slot rate went up almost 10 percentage points. So I think that's like his true ideal role. You look at him from a dimension standpoint, he is definitely somebody, I think, that needs to play in the slot again to give him that Golden Tate comparison. I would say that's kind of like the vertical slot archetype, even though Golden Tate had some of those kind of cookie cutter, pop gun slot receiver usage seasons with the Detroit Lions under Jim Bob Cooder. I think his best work Golden Tate came when he was kind of ripping it down the field as a Z as a slot. I think Parker Washington at five foot 10 and 204 pounds. He is somebody that probably should play in that role as well. So I think it's important context before we dive into some of the numbers here that I think he needs to be viewed as like a slot to me, slot first and a Z option, not like what he was kind of used as a boundary player at different points early on last season.