RP Summer Lookback: Denzel Boston Goes to the Browns

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is Reception Perception The Show, now James D. Koh and Matt Harmon.

**James D. Koh** (0:06)
Denzel Boston played for Washington here. He's a borderline first round pick. A lot of folks have him going just outside the first round, maybe high second round at the very latest mid second round pick. But he is, man, this guy's big, man. 6'4, 212 pounds. He has a 35 inch vertical, which is okay. It's pretty good given his size.
He skipped the 40 at both his combine and pro day, but he did run a 4'2, 8'20 yard shuttle, which I thought was pretty good given his size. I thought that was really good actually given his size. And this guy has been, I mean, extremely productive in and around the red zone, 20 touchdowns over his last two seasons. This is another player, Matt, where I'm like, I love this guy in contested catch.
But talk to me about what Denzel Boston brings to the table.

**Matt Harmon** (0:57)
Yeah, Denzel Boston, 28th on the Consensus Big Board. So like you said, fringe, first round, early second round type player.
I really like him a lot. I do, I don't know if he's in the same tier necessarily, if some of the guys we've already talked about here on the show, there are players I like ahead of him, but he is definitely a guy that I would be comfortable taking in the back half of the first round. I really like the profile overall. Like you mentioned, prototypical size, 6'4, 2'12, he looks like that classic X receiver.
The thing is though, he was like a perimeter player, 84% snaps outside in the games I charted, 13.6% in the slot, 2.1% in the backfield. Really though, that's where I want to start this conversation because he was in the backfield, not as like a guy that was in motion or obviously running back or something like that, but he was used as like the insert player a lot. And what I mean by that is he's like, it was a lead blocker on rundowns or he would run like quick in breakers off of play action concepts. And that's something you see like Amon Rasayn Brown doing with the Lions. You see Pukka Nakua do that with the Rams. You see, or you saw like Roma Junze doing that when he was healthy with the Bears at the beginning of last season. Shoot, go back a few years ago, the guy who kind of was the first top high-volume receiver to be doing this was like Chris Godwin with the Bucks during the Brady run. Like a lot of these guys who are very versatile players now are doing that as high-volume number one reads in their offenses. I think there's some shades of Boston's game where he's not just that prototypical ex-receiver. Now, you're right to say he is an awesome contested catch receiver. Good hands, only 1.5 percent drop rate in the game so charted. Just shy of a 79 percent contested catch rate. But I thought, and this is what's interesting about Boston, he actually only had like a 14 percent contested target rate. Like he actually wasn't one of these guys. I feel like this happens every year. There's a receiver in the draft and sometimes it's like, okay, yeah, that guy actually can't separate. But there's a big receiver that people are like, I don't know if he can really separate. And Boston isn't as good as some of the prospects I want to throw out as the comparison here in this regard that we've talked about previously, but he is definitely a guy that can separate. And like, I think that contested target percentage, which is lower than I think people would imagine, he's not just some like dunk on you jump ball guy. He absolutely can do that. The contested catch rate is good. He plays the ball well above the rim. He's got violent hands at the catch point. He's like got the my ball mentality and his quarterbacks were comfortable throwing to him when he was covered, but it also gets open. And I think it'd be used in more ways than just kind of that ball X receiver.

**James D. Koh** (3:38)
I mean, his route chart reads like a prototypical X receiver. This is a reason why. I mean, if there is a James Koh receiver out there, it's Denzel Boston. I mean, we're talking 6-4 to 12 great and contested catch. Check, check, check. He's checking all the boxes for me, man. And then when you take a look at some of his reception perception numbers, he's great on the slant, great on the dig route, great on the curl routes of these in breaking routes.