It's Easy to Fall in Love with Will Fuller's Speed and Overlook His Drops

It’s hard to watch former Notre Dame Fighting Irish wide receiver Will Fuller, and I mean that in a good way. He’s often a blur barely visible to the naked eye. The potential first-round pick at the NFL draft on April 28 whizzes by as he makes defensive backs do their best twirling ballet routines, spinning as they fail to match his speed.

But it can also be hard to watch Fuller, and I mean that in a bad way.

He gives deep passes a cushy, soft landing spot at the end of a long journey, with the nation’s fifth-highest catch rate on balls traveling 20-plus yards through the air (58.6 percent, according to Pro Football Focus). Overall, however, Fuller has too many moments when his hands seem to be coated with, first, butter, then jelly and more butter.

Fuller dropped 10 of 72 catchable passes in 2015 for a 13.9 percent drop rate that ranked 88th out of 96 qualifying wide receivers, per PFF. The previous season wasn’t much better; in 2014, Fuller sent 12.64 percent of catchable balls thrown at him to the ground.

This is where the confusion begins, along with the intrigue. Most wide receivers with hands that slippery wouldn’t even get first-round consideration, even in what’s widely considered to be a weak 2016 draft class at the position. Poor hands mean poor fundamentals, and prospects walking around with that oversized red flag usually don’t sniff Day 1.

But most wide receiver prospects don’t score 30 touchdowns over 29 starts during their collegiate careers, which slots Fuller at No. 2 on Notre Dame’s all-time receiving touchdown list. And most prospects also don’t average 20.3 yards per reception during their final college season, a year Fuller punctuated with seven games in which he recorded 100-plus yards.

Which is why, despite a core flaw, Fuller isn’t being looked at like most prospects at all. No, he’s being viewed as one of the best prospects.

Or possibly the best prospect, according to NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah:

Pegging Fuller as an opening-night selection doesn’t require walking out on a thin limb, as his name surfaces in many mock drafts. For example, four of the five mocks at CBSSports.com project Fuller as a late first-rounder, with the Minnesota Vikings (No. 23) and Cincinnati Bengals (No. 24) being popular picks for where his NFL employment will begin.

But chatter about Fuller rising first beyond the top 20, and then beyond Ole Miss’ Laquon Treadwell—who’s as close as we’ll get to a consensus top wide receiver in this class—seems bizarre at first. He’s largely one-dimensional, and those slimy hands are nightmare fuel for any general manager hoping to keep his job.

Then, as the snowball grows when others like Bleacher Report’s Matt Miller reinforce Jeremiah’s report (see below), we’re forced to explore exactly how and why Fuller’s glaring flaw could be overlooked.

And when we do that, there are plenty of reasons to believe Fuller will feel right at home in a league where aerial bombing is the new norm.

This is probably a good time to remind you about the trigger-happy NFL Fuller is entering. In 2005, only three teams completed at least a dozen passes that gained 40-plus yards. Now 10 seasons later, that number soared to 11 teams in 2015.

The post-lockout rule changes that fostered the passing boom have forced most teams to search for their version of Fuller, a receiver who can win vertically and do it consistently. Or better yet, an intense focus on that approach has ended in multiple speed merchants landing on the same roster.

In a copycat league, teams see examples set by the Pittsburgh Steelers and Arizona Cardinals, then look to duplicate that blueprint—which has created an environment where Fuller can be drafted high despite his flaws and succeed despite them, too.

It all starts with raw speed for Fuller, and he has plenty of it. The 21-year-old posted the fastest 40-yard-dash time among wide receivers at the 2016 scouting combine, needing only 4.32 seconds for his sprint.

The DeSean Jackson comparisons started flowing because of that speed. Jackson is more sure-handed, though, with the body to both dish out and withstand punishment. Fuller has also been likened to the Broncos’ Emmanuel Sanders due to his combination of speed and shiftiness.

NFL Network’s Mike Mayock agreed with the Sanders comparison in his analysis during the scouting combine. But then he conjured up an even better match.

"He fights the football a little like Ted Ginn.”

That can be taken as a piercing insult or a sort of backhanded compliment. The truth likely lies somewhere in the middle.

Derik Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports

Ginn was once thought of as a colossal first-round bust when his hands became too unreliable. But his speed and athleticism have kept him around the league for nine seasons. He’s now at the point where although his drops are still frustrating (nine in 2015, per PFF), deep catches with chunky yards far outnumber them. Therefore, they'rre more easily tolerated.

Plenty of receivers struggle with drops early in their careers, which means it’s a flaw but not necessarily a fatal one. Terrell Owens should be in the Hall of Fame one day, and he infamously dropped four passes during a 1999 playoff game. More recently, the Raiders’ Amari Cooper led the league in 2015 with 18 drops. Those drops also came during a season in which he recorded 1,070 receiving yards.

But Fuller isn’t cut from the same receiver fabric as Cooper, which is the root of those Ginn-related fears. His drops would be easier to stomach if they came partly due to a high target volume, as they did with Cooper. Fuller doesn’t have the body type or after-the-catch ability to excel on short-to-intermediate routes. At 6’0” and 186 pounds, he won't be comfortable thrashing through large trees up the middle or overpowering defenders with physical play.

Rising above concerns about a core skill requires that Fuller ooze ample talent in other areas. It means being more than simply fast. He needs to be quick, with the acceleration to keep defensive backs off balance and then shake them with quality footwork while abruptly breaking off a route.

When we look at his game film, there’s evidence that Fuller does more than just bury the needle. He’s a master manipulator, and he knows how to give cornerbacks pretzel feet.

Fuller's best asset isn’t his speed but rather how he uses it. He seems acutely aware of the difficulties his bursts present and has a keen sense for the tiny body movements that can create space.

He varies his speed expertly, which has a deceiving and maddening effect on defenders. In that sense, Fuller often becomes football’s equivalent of the ace pitcher who paints the corner with his 96 mph fastball, then buckles your knees with an 80 mph changeup.

A prime example of his sudden gear shifts came against USC in 2015 during an evening when Fuller needed just three receptions to finish with 131 yards. Of that total, 75 yards came during his opening-play touchdown.

Fuller was lined up in single coverage one-on-one against Trojans cornerback Adoree’ Jackson, who’s more than capable of handling himself on an island after being named the Pac-12’s defensive freshman of the year in 2014.

Jackson wisely gave him a cushion, and at the snap, Fuller took three long, galloping strides. His speed had reached only about threat-level yellow. But then his fourth stride was shorter as Fuller began to dip his shoulders.

Credit: Draftbreakdown.com

He was getting set to pin it to the floor and blast off downfield, right?

Jackson sure thought so, and it’s hard to fault him. He had to react accordingly, so that’s when his weight shifted, with his right foot planted as you can see above. He was bailing and getting ready to turn and run with Fuller downfield.

But Fuller had other plans. As he still charged and increased speed, his next step came to the left, toward the boundary.

Credit: Draftbreakdown.com

Note the position of Jackson’s feet now. They’re crossed, and he has his back to one of the nation’s fastest receivers.

But all is not lost yet from Jackson’s perspective. A cornerback of his caliber has the athleticism to recover in a heartbeat and flip his hips to move with Fuller as he accelerates down the sideline.

Which would be fine and maybe true if that’s where Fuller was going. Once again, he had other plans, and this time Jackson lost all hope.

Credit: Draftbreakdown.com

Fuller jammed his right foot down hard when Jackson was still bailing and preparing to flip his hips in pursuit down the sideline. With all of his weight on that foot, he then shifted his momentum and accelerated.

In a flash, he had changed direction twice and at two different speeds. He finished with a crescendo, zooming off and away from Jackson. In an instant, he was gone, gaining nearly three full yards of separation as the ball descended.

Credit: Draftbreakdown.com

Fuller is so fluid when entering and exiting his breaks, which puts tremendous stress on the cornerbacks assigned to him. As we saw with Jackson, there’s an emphasis not just on reacting rapidly, but also reacting correctly. Both actions are critical because Fuller forces cornerbacks to be precise with every movement.

That’s how he recorded two straight seasons with 1,000-plus receiving yards to finish his career at Notre Dame. Even more impressive, just over 27 percent of his 62 receptions in 2015 went for 25-plus yards, according to NFL.com’s Lance Zierlein, who ranked Fuller as the top wide receiver prospect in 2016.

He’ll still drop his share of catches that seem routine, especially early in his career as he eases in at the next level. There will be times when that will cause fans of Fuller’s future team to fill swear jars in one afternoon.

But his swift footwork to create misdirection and his own space will lead to lots of deep opportunities—so many that those booming downfield shots will make his bobbling drops a faded memory, all while he also opens up room underneath for others.

The vertical-trending NFL is thirsty for more receivers like Fuller. So it's not hard to see a future where his blemishes are overlooked and he becomes, at minimum, a first-round pick.

From there, it doesn’t take a colorful imagination to see an even brighter future: Fuller as the top pick at his position.