Tyreek Hill of the Miami Dolphins and Odell Beckham Jr. of the Baltimore Ravens are two of the NFL’s more preposterously athletic receivers, allowing them to correct issues in communication on the fly when it comes to routes, and where the ball is thrown. In Beckham’s case, we saw this early on in Baltimore’s Sunday game against the Los Angeles Rams.
With 5:27 left in the first quarter, Lamar Jackson threw a nasty in cut/fade to Beckham, and Beckham had cornerback Derion Kendrick beaten all the way. But he then had to adjust to the fact that he and Jackson weren’t on the same page regarding where the ball was supposed to go, and Beckham made an outstanding adjustment right in time for a 20-yard gain.
OBJ doing OBJ things
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— Baltimore Ravens (@Ravens) December 10, 2023
This put us in mind of Tyreek Hill’s 60-yard touchdown catch from Tua Tagovailoa against the Washington Commanders last Sunday. The Commanders employed the highly controversial (read: insane) strategy of playing a ton of man coverage against Hill with no help up top, and Hill had a predictably enormous game as a result. On the touchdown with 9:22 left in the first half, Washington was actually in Cover-3, but it didn’t matter. Hill got off the snap at full speed out of motion, barbecued cornerback Kendall Fuller, and then had quite the adventure as he had to calibrate his route to where the ball was going.
“It’s insane,” Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel said after the game of Hill’s catch. “Specifically for really fast guys. It’s something that Tyreek has always been very adept at but to, just think of it this way, in the heat of battle you see the ball and then you just turn away from it and try to find it again. That is very difficult. He makes it look super easy. But that ability, there’s few and far between that are able to make that play down the field wide open or not. Tua knows that and he knows that if he puts it far enough sometimes that Tyreek has done that several times in practice before.
“The fact that it was in stride makes it even more impressive of a catch because a lot of times when guys go blind to the ball, they’re able to make a play if it’s by stopping them and hitting them in the stomach. To go Willie Mays on it is pretty impressive.”
No argument here, and we’ll bet that Ravens head coach John Harbaugh will have something similar to say about Beckham’s adjustment.
