RP Clips: Nico Collins SZN?

**Matt Harmon** (0:00)
This is Reception Perception, The Show. James Koh and Matt Harmon. All right, hit me with your second one, pal. All right, second one here. We'll stick it like this guy's gonna have an awesome season. Nico Collins is the wide receiver one overall in fantasy football this season. Nico Collins still goes kind of in the back half of the second round in fantasy drafts, and I think we've kind of talked around some of the issues, or at least some of the issues that people have with him. One, injuries, and what can you say about that, right? Like what can you say about the fact that he gets banged up? It is the reality of the situation. He does have to stay on the football field for this to happen.
But when he's on the football field, I really don't see any hesitation for projecting him this year.
I'm not quite sure I get it. Like he's second in yards per route since CJ Strauss was drafted in 2023 I think that's important to say since CJ Strauss was drafted in 2023, because whenever I put this stat out that he's second in NFL in yards per hour, people are like, God, we just got to get him a quarterback. I'm like, who do you think has been the quarterback this whole time? It's not like three Davis Mills games that people obsess over are the ones pushing up the production here. No, it's with CJ Strauss as the quarterback. Obviously, then in isolation, he's even better than that. Ninety-seventh percentile success rate versus press, 92nd percentile success rate versus man last year. He's one of the true elite press man coverage beaters. And as a pure X receiver, 83rd percentile success rate versus zone, which it's really hard to be that X receiver and be a consistent over 80 percent success rate versus zone player. But Nico Collins has done it pretty consistently here the last couple of years. And like I mentioned, 89.5 percent of his snaps as the on-ball player last year in RP.
We haven't talked about the Kaishan Booty profile, which went up yesterday, excuse me, Monday. God, I have no idea what day it is.
It went up on Monday. There are four players in RP history that have taken 90 plus percent of their snaps outside and on the ball. Two of them were New England Patriots last year, Kyle Williams and Kaishan Booty. So look, while I know, or at least I've heard that the Texans don't want to put a lot more in terms of playing other positions on Nico Collins' plate. If we just get him 10 percent fewer snaps at the X receiver spot, because we brought in a sacrificial X here in Kaishan Booty, who I actually think could play better as a Z receiver anyways. But still, we sometimes sacrifice him at that X receiver position. That's how Nico Collins really, really goes to the moon this upcoming season. So I just feel like, and also by the way, last point of this again, when we're talking about the whole fantasy community has been that who's going to be the next Jackson, Smith and Jigba, right? Who's going to be a really talented player who gets a little bit of a role change, but also plays on a team with all these heavy personnel packages. I know that Nico Collins isn't like fit the Lad McConkey bucket, or even the Z Flowers bucket, because he's a little bit farther along in his career. But he has a lot of those peripherals coming this year, because I think the Texans, after drafting Marlon Klein, adding Foster Moreau and free agency, they're going to play a lot more heavy personnel packages. So I feel like Nico Collins is another one of these guys, that could get like 30% of his team's target simply due to a little bit of a role tweak.