2020 NFL Draft: The year of the wide receiver
By Ryan Roberts
Next in Line at Wide Receiver U: Tee Higgins, Clemson
Clemson is making a strong recent claim towards the crown of Wide Receiver U. With players like DeAndre Hopkins, Sammy Watkins and Mike Williams dawning the orange and white in recent memory, they have a legitimate argument. Now enter Tee Higgins into this string of recent wide receiver success stories.
Coming out of Oak Ridge High School, Higgins was tabbed as a 5-star recruit and potential game-changer early in his Tigers career. He built on freshman flashes with a breakout sophomore season where he recorded 59 receptions for 936 yards and 12 touchdowns for the national champions.
Higgins, listed at 6-4 and 205 pounds, feasts on smaller defensive backs outside of the numbers. Once he establishes body positioning, he is able to out-physical defenders at the highest point. There his terrific body control is on full display, making some of the most ridiculously athletic grabs performed at an almost routine level.
He is also able to create adequate separation with his insanely long strides, enabling him to regularly eat up defenders cushion, stack and separate with his length at the catch point. Higgins does not come without a single concern, however. He will have to answer long speed questions to determine just how high the ceiling is with him.
While he does not appear to be a blazer by any stretch, any potential separation issues are not a huge worry for me. He has shown enough foot quickness to get himself into solid position consistently. There, he is able to create that aforementioned desired separation with his ability to win in the air, in a similar vein to Hopkins and Mike Williams that came before him.
It also doesn’t hurt to have the eventual 2021 NFL Draft first overall selection, Trevor Lawrence, tossing him the pigskin.