Don't Let His Release Fool You, Jeremy Maclin Still Has Pro Bowl Potential
When the Kansas City Chiefs released receiver Jeremy Maclin on June 2, it was one of the more surprising transactions of the 2017 offseason. There was enough tape, despite his disappointing, injury-plagued 2016 season, to indicate that this was a one-year aberration for Maclin and in no way implied that he was on the decline.
The Baltimore Ravens apparently agreed, signing the veteran receiver to a two-year deal on Monday, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter. Maclin had drawn interest from the Cleveland Browns (per Cleveland.com), Buffalo Bills (per BuffaloBills.com) and Baltimore Ravens (per ESPN's Adam Schefter). He visited Baltimore and Buffalo in recent days and has been recruited by Bills running back (and former Eagles teammate) LeSean McCoy, per Mike Rodak of ESPN.com.
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Baltimore is a great fit, given Ravens offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg's nuanced, possession-based West Coast offense with Joe Flacco’s deep arm factored in. Maclin should have tons of targets in Baltimore, where there is a current lack of top receivers outside of Mike Wallace, and Maclin will have more opportunities to display his most obvious attributes as a deep receiver.
Maclin caught just 44 passes for 536 yards and two touchdowns in 12 games last season, but he had been one of the league’s more productive targets in the previous two seasons for both the Chiefs in 2015 and the Eagles in 2014. In 2015, he led the Chiefs in targets (124), receptions (87), receiving yards (1,088) and receiving touchdowns (eight). And the year before in Philly, he led all Eagles receivers with 148 targets, 85 catches, 1,318 yards and 10 touchdowns. That's the season in which Maclin earned his only Pro Bowl nod, but he was no slouch in 2015 either.
Maclin recently proclaimed that he wanted to return to form and make the disappointments of 2016 a distant memory.
“It just wasn’t up to my standards,” he told the Kansas City Star's Terez A. Paylor in late May. “I’ve never been a stat guy. I’ve never been a guy to say, ‘I want this, I want that.’ I just didn’t play as well as I could have. And by not playing well, I feel like I let my team down. And that’s the most important part of it.”
When the Chiefs signed Maclin to a five-year, $55 million contract with $22.5 million guaranteed in March 2015, it was clear the intention was for Maclin to be the epicenter of head coach Andy Reid’s passing game. Reid was the Eagles’ head coach when Maclin was selected in the first round of the 2009 draft out of Missouri, so it was already clear that he would understand Reid’s offense. And the return to his home state seemed right out of a storybook.
One reason for the cut was the contract Maclin signed—he had a $12.4 million salary cap charge for the 2017 season, per OverTheCap.com. Even after the release, which saves the team $10 million this season, the Chiefs are still only about $11.3 million under the cap. Without cutting Maclin or exorcising another expensive veteran, there’s no way the Chiefs could have afforded to sign their rookie class, an exercise that generally costs a team between $5-6 million in cap space.
But again, when you look at the tape, it's clear that even when he was injured last season, Maclin has the attributes to be a No. 1 receiver in the right offense—an offense in which the orchestrated deep pass is a major component.
At 6’0” and 200 pounds, Maclin isn’t the type of receiver who’s going to win in contested situations with sheer physicality. He’s a refined route-runner who excels at the subtle movements practiced by more experienced receivers when there’s a need to get out of tight coverage in a hurry. This touchdown against the Colts in Week 8 is a perfect example.
Here, Maclin (No. 19) has a one-on-one against safety Matthias Farley (No. 41) after Kelce (No. 87) took safety T.J. Green (No. 32) inside on pre-snap motion. At the snap, Maclin made the first of a couple nifty moves. He stuttered his feet where Green was and beat him quickly to the outside. That move set up another, where Maclin widened his distance and set himself up for the easy completion. This is a fine illustrative example of how well Maclin does the little things that lead to success. He can create easier completions for his quarterback when he does things like this.
And Maclin is tough. He’ll hang in there and catch the ball in traffic, even when he knows he’s about to get poleaxed. This 22-yard catch over the middle against the Chargers in Week 1 shows that specifically. Here, he pushed cornerback Jason Verrett (No. 22) out of tight coverage at the snap to get separation and ran a quick post upfield. He was wide open for the catch, but the problem is he had three defenders converging on him—cornerback Brandon Flowers (No. 24), safety Dwight Lowery (No. 20) and safety Jahleel Addae (No. 37).
Addae caught a penalty for targeting Maclin with his helmet, but Smith is culpable here to a point. You don’t want to put your receiver in a position where he has to jump for the ball as multiple defenders converge on him. Maclin didn’t have time to close the catch and prepare for the impact, and he got his bell rung.
But where Maclin really excels is as a intermediate-to-deep receiver, both from the slot and outside, who can use his route awareness and ability to contort his body for spectacular catches. This 19-yard touchdown against Verrett came in the fourth quarter of that same Week 1 game against the Chargers. Just eight clock minutes before, Maclin found himself dazed and confused after he was caught between three San Diego defenders.
But on this play, watch how Maclin gets outside position on the fade route. Verrett runs with him step for step—when healthy, he’s one of the NFL’s top cornerbacks—but at the last second, Maclin turns his body away from Verrett and toward the boundary, where only he can catch the ball, and Verrett is left wondering what happened.
Let’s head to Week 15 against the Titans for another example of Maclin’s acumen as a deep receiver. Here, Maclin runs a deep outside boundary route against cornerback Brice McCain (No. 23), who isn’t a great outside defender, but he was in line with Maclin all the way downfield.
Still, it was Maclin who adjusted to Smith’s slightly underthrown pass and made the catch. Again, you see a receiver whose awareness in short spaces doesn’t blow up the highlight reels but allows his offense to get things done. Here, it’s a 44-yard completion.
That underthrown pass is something you see on quite a few Alex Smith deep attempts. It’s no secret that, for all his efficiency, Smith is not a consistent or prolific deep thrower. Last season, he completed just 15 passes of 20 yards or more in 46 attempts—fewer than 10 percent of his total passing attempts—for 521 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions. This is why the Chiefs selected Texas Tech quarterback Patrick Mahomes in the first round of the 2017 draft: They wanted more explosive plays in their future.
It’s a shame that when Mahomes takes over the offense and those explosive plays increase, Maclin won’t be around to help create them, because he’d be a perfect fit in an offense that takes more chances downfield. Last season, he caught just four deep passes—of course, it’s hard to do much more when the opportunities aren’t there. With the Eagles in 2014, he caught nine deep passes for five touchdowns. When he’s healthy, there’s no reason to believe that Maclin can’t put up those types of numbers again.
That's why the release for the Chiefs could be a blessing in disguise for Maclin. Beyond the injuries he suffered in 2016, he wasn’t always an ideal fit in Kansas City’s offense. Smith is an efficient but limited passer who needs his receivers to run perfectly timed routes with ideal anticipation. If that’s not happening, Smith benefits from two types of receivers: yards-after-catch guys like tight end Travis Kelce (who, with 640 total, had 240 more yards after the catch last year than any other tight end, per Pro Football Focus) and speed burners like 2016 rookie Tyreek Hill, whose ability to separate from coverage comes quickly after the snap.
The chemistry between Smith and Maclin, which was clear in 2015, wasn’t there last season. Everything seemed a bit off. Maclin was slowed by injuries, but there were also times when the two seemed out of sync on general route concepts.
Of the four 2016 Smith interceptions I watched in which Maclin was the target, on three the intercepting defender jumped the route at the right time to take the ball away or boxed Maclin out of the angle where the ball was going.
The fourth, this LeShaun Sims interception of a Smith pass to Maclin in the end zone in Week 15, is a good example of what looks like route miscommunication. Maclin was in the left slot, and Sims (No. 36) was playing him in tight coverage. Maclin established outside position at the snap, Sims simply closed to the inside and that’s where the ball went. Given Smith’s chin-strap-flapping frustration after the play, one might surmise that Maclin was supposed to move inside on that one.
Jeremy Maclin still has enough to help an NFL offense. And in the right offense (which the Ravens have), he’s got more than that—he has Pro Bowl potential.
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