[FULL EPISODE] Week 2 Review: A 2nd Round Steal, Confusing Bears and Silver & Black Surge

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)

Our boys are backbanging.

Matt Harmon (0:08)

Excellent separation against ManCover. This is Reception Perception.

James Koh (0:15)

Yo, what's cracking there, buddy? James Koh, Matt Harmon here with you. You're listening to Reception Perception, The Show. All right, week two is practically in the books, a busy week, and it was a bounce back week in the most not nice way. Because week one, Matt, we saw a crazy amount of scoring. As a matter of fact, historic scoring there in week number two, one. And then in week number two, we all came crashing back down to earth, at least for a lot of different spots here. So I don't know, man. Week two, I thought was a kind of a good dose of reality.

Matt Harmon (0:48)

Well, this is how it goes early in the season, because I mean, football is a small sample size sport anyways. And then when we're dealing in these like week to week samples, we really can yo-yo back and forth to, oh man, week one, just this big huge reveal. I know so much now. And then you feel like you know nothing then week two. And by the way, four weeks from now, we're going to be looking back at things that we said on this show and thinking like, well, that was pretty stupid and over reactionary, because that's just kind of the way it is. So it's tough with football because you don't know like how, like where the winds are blowing essentially, you know, where are we in terms of, all right, am I overreacting? Am I underreacting? Because sometimes when you underreact, you miss the boat. Sometimes when you overreact, obviously you go a step too far. So these are the things I'm constantly thinking about throughout the day when we're dealing with these like small sample sizes.

James Koh (1:43)

Which is what makes football so fun. You know, it's so debatable.

And it's very, there's a lot of talking points, but man, hey, listen, in Cleveland, there is no question Denzel Boston, back-to-back weeks now, making big plays, making big splash plays. And I think we knew this is kind of sort of the game that Denzel Boston would play in Cleveland. But there have been some really early returns here in Cleveland for Denzel Boston, connecting with Deshaun Watson.

Matt Harmon (2:12)

Yes.

Really impressive start to his NFL career is Denzel Boston off to here. Okay. 10 rookie wide receivers have run around on more than 45% of their teams drop back so far, heading into Monday Night Football. One of them is Malachi Fields, actually, who will play on Monday Night Football. But Denzel Boston, 95.5% he has been out there in terms of the route participation. He is clearly far and away the number one rookie in that metric. He's actually been efficient with his opportunities. 2.44 yards per route run. He's doing all this while basically only playing as an X receiver. I charted the game in week two. He is in the slot 10% of his snaps. He is on the line of scrimmage 98% of the time. I actually think there is some long term flexibility for Denzel Boston to do more than that. But he has really answered the bell in terms of his ability to play X receiver. I think he's been really impressive through two weeks. Like this isn't just a one week thing either. He had the touchdown, the big touchdown in week one where obviously the game was so beyond over at that point. So certainly week two was more impressive from what we got with Denzel Boston there. By the way, it also could have been a bigger game.

He had a touchdown, a long catch and run. He could have had a second touchdown where it's a really nice go route that he runs. He creates a sliver of separation along the sideline in the end zone. Deshaun Watson, who I'll get back to in just a second, to his credit, puts a really nice ball on Denzel Boston and it just slips out of his hands last minute as he's going out of bounds. So could have been an even bigger day for Denzel Boston.

Again, like the conclusion of this story, and I want to get into the specifics here, but the conclusion of this story is, I can't believe this guy was a second round pick. He should have been a no doubt about it first rounder in this draft class. I think it was crazy. Like we'll see what the long term ceiling is for Denzel Boston, but clearly a good player. The Browns have a really nice starting ex receiver. Their second receiver that they took in the NFL draft. I think Casey Concepcion has looked really good too, but Boston, every down player, ex receiver, winning on some big boy stuff so far.