RP Clips: Ladd McConkey is a Reception Perception Poster Child

**Matt Harmon** (0:00)
This is Reception Perception The Show. Now, James Koh and Matt Harmon.

**James Koh** (0:06)
Ladd McConkey is another player that I thought I had really high hopes for in 2025, and he just didn't quite get there, man. This is a player that had 1,100 yards his rookie season, 1149, and falls down to sub 800, 789 receiving last year for Ladd McConkey, 73 percent catch rate in 2024, 62 percent catch rate in 2025 And yet, Reception Perception is literally built, I think, in my opinion, for a player like Ladd McConkey. You go to the website, it's in big bold letters, telling you who is good before they're good.
That is something that I told Matt before we even had this website. I'm like, this is what Reception Perception does. Literally, this is what it tells you who is good before they're good. This is the power of Reception Perception. And I feel like RP was literally made for a player like Ladd, because I think Ladd, I'm with you. And your profile makes it very clear, but I'm with you. I think Ladd McConkey comes back in a huge way. I think he's going to have a great season here in 2026

**Matt Harmon** (1:13)
Oh, yeah. I mean, just obviously, you're not good at coming up with taglines. You were better at telling you who's good before they're good. That was good stuff by you, nothing by me there. But here's your tagline for the Ladd-McConkey situation. Most obvious bounce back candidate at wide receiver in the entire NFL, period. End of story.
If we're doing a TikTok vid, you'd be like, Ladd-McConkey is the most obvious bounce back candidate in the NFL.
Roll the clickbait, baby. Yeah, exactly. But no, I think that when you look at Ladd last year, I mean, this 365 days ago, what I said about Ladd-McConkey was I think you could make a strong case that he was the best rookie in the 2024 season, the best rookie wide receiver on film. We did lead all rookie receivers in yards. Unfortunately, as you mentioned, it was 783 and he's not one of these guys like Roma Dunze or even Brian Thomas or Kevin Harrison that missed a bunch of time or played through. Maybe he had some stuff here or there, but there wasn't this big injury or anything. I think he was more a victim because the charting profile shows that there wasn't some brutal drop in his play or anything like that. As a matter of fact, there's several areas we're going to talk about where he got better.
But it wasn't as if he even had a change of opportunity from a playing time standpoint, I think he was mostly just a victim of playing in a more crowded offense with Keenan Allen back in the mix, soaking up layup targets. And then the unit itself just collapsed under the weight of cluster injuries at the tackle position and a bad interior offensive line that the Chargers themselves wanted to go in with that interior of the offensive line last year. Bad idea at the time, it didn't work out. But so yeah, obviously the disaster was on the interior. Ray Sean Slater lost before the season began. Joe Ault in and out of the line up. Just unfortunate, but I think what we see from McConkey in isolation is that still a really good player that I think just fits this new offense with Mike McDaniel pretty perfectly.

**James Koh** (3:31)
Yeah, he absolutely killed it in the intermediate area, right? 85% success rate on the dig, 86% on the curl, 76% on the out. Nearly 40% of his routes last year were on these three routes. He's crushing you in the intermediate, and he's also obviously extraordinarily good in the short area as well.
I gotta be honest with you, I was encouraged and really happy to see that, I get it, somewhat limited opportunities. What is it? Less than 12% of his routes came on the nine in post, but 66.7% success rate on the nine, 77% success rate on the post, those are extremely strong numbers. It's a smaller sample than you would like to see, but overall, even when he does get downfield, he's winning there too.

**Matt Harmon** (4:23)
Oh yeah, this is why I've always said he's, despite the fact that he's kind of a small white, he's not a guy that is a bunny hop slot receiver by any means. This is a downfield, vertical man coverage beater. My player comparison form as a prospect was Tyler Lockett.
Ironically enough, if you look at the new player comparison tool on our site, Reception Perception, his 2025 season draws two matches to previous Tyler Lockett seasons, and it actually has one Tyler Lockett match in his rookie season charting profile as well. So, and look, Lockett, when he was at his best, was an elite separator who could win at all depths and was electric downfield. And I know he got a lot of jokes about, well, he falls down on first contact a lot when he was older. But remember, this guy was like a star kick return. He was awesome with the ball in his hands. That's another thing McConkey is really, really good at. So these guys are like top level performers against man coverage, both of them at their piece. McConkey, same with Lockett. But, you know, Tyler Lockett also, like I said, explosive downfield player. You are outlining this explosive downfield route running for Ladd McConkey. We didn't get to see a lot of that last year. His slant route rate jumped from 16.9% as a rookie to over 28% last year. And a lot of the other routes, you mentioned the dig route, which he's extremely good at. The outbreakers, like these big out breaking routes, those fell dig route fell from 22% to 18%.