Deep Battle Brewing for Roster Spots at Wide Receiver for New England Patriots

You can't control whether or not your team stays healthy, but you can control your level of preparation when an injury strikes.

That's the approach the New England Patriots are taking at wide receiver a year after one injury to Julian Edelman caused the entire offense to unravel. The Patriots took the tried-and-true volume approach at wide receiver, adding a mix of young and veteran receivers to the depth chart in hopes of creating a deep battle for roster spots.

In the process, they added veterans Nate Washington and Chris Hogan, along with rookies Malcolm Mitchell and Devin Lucien and an under-the-radar signing in DeAndre Carter. That's five new wide receivers to go with the incumbent veterans, Edelman and Danny Amendola, along with other supporting players such as Aaron Dobson, Keshawn Martin, Chris Harper and special teams ace Matthew Slater.

That's 11 wide receivers battling it out for what will most likely be five or six roster spots. 

Each of these receivers brings something different to the table. Edelman and Amendola bring their experience and route-running savvy; Hogan, Washington, and Dobson have size that sets them apart from the rest; Mitchell, Lucien, Martin, Harper and Carter are all explosive athletes. As such, one could make the case for virtually any combination as candidates for the final roster.

Right now, the front-runners would appear to be Edelman, Amendola, Hogan and Mitchell. That being said, there's still plenty of time for things to change. 

Obviously, the first component the Patriots will be searching for is talent. The two foremost attributes they seek in wide receivers are their ability to get open and catch the ball when it is thrown to them.

Edelman sees a lot of targets, and although his drop rate is fairly high (10.29 percent, 25th out of 85 wide receivers, according to Pro Football Focus), there is some valuable context. He finished the regular season with seven drops, but four of them were in two games while dealing with an injured finger.

Player	Catches	Drops	Drop rate
Julian Edelman	196	23	10.5
Danny Amendola	110	8	6.8
Chris Hogan	77	7	8.3
Nate Washington	88	15	14.6
Aaron Dobson	16	2	11.1
Malcolm Mitchell	89	4	4.7
Devin Lucien	95	5	5

Edelman isn't the only receiver who has dropped catchable passes, though. There's also Washington and Dobson, both of whom have drop rates in the double digits over the past two years. When you extend the sample size to three seasons, Amendola's number jumps to 10.2 percent. 

Those numbers help provide some early measures for those receivers, but not without context. For example, Washington and Hogan have been catching balls from subpar quarterbacks for years, and Mitchell and Lucien won't have the vast cushion that comes from lining up across from less-talented college cornerbacks.

For those and other reasons, it won't be as easy as rifling through a stat sheet to find the receivers that do the best job of hanging on to the ball. The skill set has to also be a match.

This year more than other years, size could also be a factor. Looking at the receivers the Patriots added, most are in the 6'1" to 6'2" range. That might be because the Patriots will need more production from boundary receivers this year than in years past, thanks to the reintroduction of two-tight end sets as the primary offensive formation in New England's arsenal. 

Those big-bodied boundary receivers can also help as blockers in the run game.

But it doesn't stop there. A big part of the evaluation is with regard to the receiver's ability to understand the offense and get on the same page with quarterback Tom Brady (or in this case, Jimmy Garoppolo). Of course, in that respect, the Patriots won't know which receivers are and are not a fit until they get onto the practice field, or possibly even later. 

The Patriots are hoping that, in this deep group, they can get the nearest thing to a "victor" or several victors who emerge from the group to claim a job for their own.