RP Summer Lookback: Carnell Tate Goes to the Titans

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

**James Koh** (0:06)
But let's start with Carnell Tate. When you look at the mock traps, Chad Reuters got him going number 12 to Dallas, which I think is interesting. But a lot of different folks have him at number six to Cleveland. DJ Daniel Jeremiah, Pete Prisco from CBS have Carnell Tate mocked to Cleveland at number six. He's 6'2, 192 pounds, he ran a 4'5, 340, Matt. You know why I talked about this?
I don't think you're very concerned about the 40 time. I am a 40 guy. I'm not that concerned about the 40 time.
This is a player that has drawn comparisons to guys like CD Lamb because of his size, as well as Chris Olave because of his skill set. Where do you kind of fall in on Carnell Tate?

**Matt Harmon** (0:48)
Yeah, we did a whole breakdown after the combine about the 40 time. And people can go back and check that episode out, just going through the top deep threats this year. Guys who had over 250 yards on 20 plus area throws, and the average 40 time of those guys was like 4.49, so essentially a 4.5, so not a concern. Jackson Smith DeJigbo, by the way, shout out to him, just signed a monster extension. He ran today, he ran somewhere in this range of 4.5 at his pro day. So like, okay, we don't care about, we're fine with the 40 time here in terms of Carnell Tate. But yeah, I actually don't know if I really like the CD Lamb or Chris Olave comparisons. I can see why he's similar to Olave because they were both truly like pro ready route runners coming into the NFL. That's what I think is really exciting about Carnell Tate, and he's also a really good deep threat as well, which Olave was at Ohio State.
I've compared Carnell Tate a little bit more to like an early career, Calvin Ridley blended with George Pickens at the catch point.
That's the way that I see him, so a little bit of a combo type comparison there. Somebody that just eats up man coverage. He is very impressive working the vertical stem as a boundary receiver on film last year. Best hands, not just in this class, him and Lemon are the two guys that just have incredible hands in this class and probably some of the best set of hands I've evaluated in the last few classes. Tate not only didn't drop a pass in his Reception Perception sample, he did not drop a pass all of last year while playing in college, and his contested catch rate in his RP sample is over 90 percent. I mean, he is like, he is a very...

**James Koh** (2:42)
Come on.

**Matt Harmon** (2:42)
I wrote this in the profile. He's like a very aesthetically pleasing player to watch and catch the football.
He attacks the ball like with fully extended arms. He's consistently got like right and tight hand technique. He's combative. He just works for passes away from his frame. Even when it's just like not a contested catch or anything, he just puts those arms out, plucks it in and it's just all very, very clean. He's a very technically refined player. So I think there's a pretty easy floor to him being a starting number two type of receiver, but he's so good against man coverage. I do think there's a, is there's a high ceiling as well.

**James Koh** (3:22)
As you mentioned, elite man, press scores, 77.3% success rate versus man. Anything above 70 at the collegiate level, you want to be above 75, but you know, okay, 77 is really, really good press score of 75% success rate against press. Again, really, really good numbers. These are again, well above the 80th percentile when we're talking about the collegiate scores here. So, Carnell Tate looks really, really good against man press. His three most ran routes are the nine dig and curl, right? This is somewhat of a, an X receiver route tree here, nine dig and curl. And dude was unstoppable on these routes. What?
68.6 percent success rate on the nine and 82 percent success rate on the dig and an 84 percent success rate on the curl. When you see a guy who has run a ton of routes and he's just dang near unstoppable on those routes, that tells me a lot in terms of what this player is. When he goes out there and he makes it a priority to go out there and get open, he's going to do just that. Carnell Tate was absolutely awesome his last year at Ohio State.