https://thejetpress.com/posts/malachi-corley-break-ny-jets-dreaded-day-2-wr-curse-01j1rwq99y6t The Jets hope Malachi Corley can be different By Justin Fried | Jul 9, 2024 The NY Jets are understandably excited about rookie wide receiver Malachi Corley. After all, this is a player the team aggressively pursued on Day 2 of the 2024 NFL Draft, making multiple attempts to trade into the second round to grab him. In the end, the Jets wound up landing Corley in the third round of this year's draft, and the team hopes he can go on to not only play an important role in his rookie season but serve as a foundational building block on offense moving forward. Corley's dynamic YAC ability and developing skills as a receiver have Jets fans excited, but if the Western Kentucky product is going to find success at the NFL level, he's first going to have to overcome a decades-long curse affecting the franchise. The Jets have repeatedly failed with their many attempts to target a wide receiver on Day 2 of the NFL Draft. Corley is hoping to overcome a curse that has long affected the organization. The NY Jets hope Malachi Corley can overcome their WR draft curse The Jets' recent history of drafting wide receivers in the second and third rounds reads more like a list of the team's most notable busts of the 21st century. Names like Stephen Hill and Devin Smith immediately come to mind. In fact, the Jets drafted five wide receivers on Day 2 of the NFL Draft between the years 2012 and 2021. Those five players are Elijah Moore, Denzel Mims, ArDarius Stewart, Devin Smith, and Stephen Hill. Quite astonishingly, Mims is the only one of those five to make it past his second year with the Jets. That's a horrific hit rate for a couple of rounds that are supposed to provide teams with genuine building blocks. It's one thing to miss on players on Day 2 of the draft, but it's another thing to miss so bad that they're not even on your roster after just two seasons. Mims, meanwhile, was reduced to a bench warmer after his rookie season. You have to go all the way back to the year 2000 to find the last time the Jets hit on a Day 2 wide receiver prospect, that being Jets legend Laveranues Coles in the third round. Of course, past results with different coaching staffs and different regimes don't impact Corley or his future. Whether he succeeds or fails in the NFL, it will have nothing to do with the Jets' previous draft busts. But it can be difficult for Jets fans to ignore history, especially with reports coming out of spring practices that Corley is working behind second-year undrafted free agent Xavier Gipson. The paranoia starts to set in. Jets fans shouldn't expect Corley to enter the NFL and immediately become a star or even a starting-caliber wide receiver. Despite his explosiveness and playmaking ceiling, Corley is still working out the nuances of the wide receiver position. He'll have an opportunity to earn the starting slot receiver job this summer, but even if he impresses in the preseason and carves out a role on offense, it's unlikely that he will be a prominent part of the passing game as a rookie. Expectations should be curbed for Corley in 2024. For his rookie season to be considered a success, the Jets just need to see continued growth from him as a receiver while offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett hopefully finds ways to get him involved on offense. It's unfair to saddle Corley with the "Deebo Samuel 2.0" label and the expectations that come with it, but it's equally unfair to liken him to failed Jets draft picks of yesteryear. Just let him be Malachi Corley.
There's no reason to think no. Joe Douglas is much better at drafting than any of those yahoos from the past. Yes I understand Elijah Moore. I also understand Denzel Mims. But the fact is, Moore was a malcontent and we had no QB to throw him the ball and he grew impatient. I'd bet if he had the opportunity to come back to NY and play with Rodgers as his QB? He would jump at the chance. Not that I want him back. I don't. He pissed and moaned until JD did something about his whiny ass. Denzel Mims was just a bad pick which every GM can make. No GM, that I'm aware of is perfect at drafting and JD is no exception.
I'll believe it when I see it. I hope the kid does great, and he's set up much better for success than many of his predecessors in this spot have been, but this is the Jets. And, at the end of the day, the Jets are going to Jet.
That's an interesting thought/question, so I just googled it. The only thing I found was a response by Dane Brugler (who I'm not a fan of, but think it's a pretty good article) in a SI article: https://www.si.com/nfl/draft/latest...for-when-scouting-wide-receivers-01hynj16sab2 He said: How well does YAC-ability translate to the NFL and can it be the identifying trait of a WR? Brugler: "When the majority of your targets are within five yards of the line of scrimmage, it makes it difficult because, okay, does that mean that's what you have to be at the next level or are you more than that? And that's where the Senior Bowl and East-West Shrine and these all-star games hopefully give you a better sense for what they are that you didn't see enough of on film. Because, yeah, a lot of these receivers, you see them mostly used on screens, on jets, manufactured touches to get the ball in their hands to let them go make a play, be a catch-and-go creator. And there's certainly value in that. There's no doubt about it. But we've seen, I think, seen enough of these guys where it's not being a more complete receiver makes it tough to keep them on the roster unless you're really, really good in that area... If you're not good enough as a return man, and if you're not a dynamite player in that role, it's going to be tough to keep you on the roster and really make a case for why you deserve to be there if you're not just, if you aren't Deebo Samuel and aren't high level in that role. So yeah, that does make it tough as you're, and Malachi Corley is a great example of that this year. We'll have to see how that plays out and see if how that adjusts how we think about those guys." Since Corley didn't run a full route tree in college, I thought the following from the same article might be relevant/of interest as well. On the necessity of needing to run a diverse route tree at the college level Brugler: "When these guys make that jump to the NFL level, it's for some of these guys, it's tough. And that's where, that's why the draft process is the draft process, where, you know, the interviews are so important. Getting these guys on the whiteboard to understand, okay, or, you know, watch film with them. Okay, you did this, this and this. Was it based on the coverage? Was it based off of something you saw during the week? Was it, you know, what made you do this? And if the wide receiver understands, and this was a big question, you know, and it works both ways. A guy like DK Metcalf at Ole Miss was not running this advanced route tree. And, you know, that was one of the reasons he fell to the end of the second round was, okay, he's just, he's big, strong, going to run on a straight line. But obviously, he's been more than that. Now that he's not the most advanced route runner in terms of running the full tree with the Seahawks, he's done enough where, and he's got the physical traits, obviously, where he can go make plays happen. So I think it depends. It's not as strict as I need all my receivers be able to run every branch of the route tree at a high level.It's just, that's not realistic. But I do need them to understand what every branch of the route tree means and what's expected of him based off of what we're going to be asking him to do. So some guys aren't equipped for that. It's going to take time, and we have to remember, too, when you play receiver in the NFL, timing is paramount.It's everything. If you're not on time with your quarterback, it's an interception or it's incomplete, and every little microsecond matters when you're playing receiver. So it's having that mental acumen and that experience, it really is important, but it also is not always easy to project to the next level because a lot of these guys don't run full route trees, but some of them are capable. Some of them have that in them, and they have the athleticism and the know-how. It's just you have to project that, and it's a little bit of an unknown variable with a lot of these receiving prospects." I also found this article which has some relevance: https://www.nbcsports.com/fantasy/f...aft-which-rookie-receivers-are-target-earners Malachi Corley (NYJ) Corley, taken by the Jets in the third round, is going to fit quite well in this era of check down passing. The self-proclaimed King of YAC (the metrics confirm this claim), Corley in 2023 was fifth in the nation in yards after the catch per reception and 14th in yards per route run. The knock on Corley is that his yards per route run was artificially inflated by a nonstop flow of short targets (his final-season aDOT was 5.8). This critique would hold some weight if the Jets drafted Corley to be their boundary-dwelling downfield speed merchant. But they didn’t. He’s going to continue eating up check downs in the pros. In a Jets offense quarterbacked by a 40 year old with an atrophied left leg, I’m guessing there’s going to be plenty of short passes to go around. Corely has every chance to carve out a role as New York’s primary slot receiver, and with it, a valuable fantasy role with only Garrett Wilson ahead of him in the wideout target pecking order. Corley, solidly built at 215 pounds, is a proven target getter. He led Western Kentucky last season with a dominant 31 percent target share, higher than his 2022 target share of 27.7 percent. His TPRR of 32 percent jumps off the spreadsheet for a third-round selection. And for the haters: Corley led the Hilltoppers in deep targets last year. Another case against Corley is his level of collegiate competition. And yes, the Hilltoppers were not squaring off against Alabama every week. Corley did, however, roast the Ohio State secondary last September to the tune of eight receptions, 88 yards, and a touchdown on 14 targets. Corley saw 38 percent of the team’s targets that day. Fantasy managers would do well to remember this summer that Jets general manager Joe Douglas tried several times to trade up to secure Corley in the draft. The Jets didn’t add Corley in the third round to sit behind Xavier Gipson and Allen Lazard, who is by most measurements the worst receiver in the NFL.
It is for WRs. Before Corley, between 2012 and 2021, the WRs the Jets have taken on the 2nd day of the draft (2nd and 3rd rounds) are in order: 2012 - Stephen Hill (2nd round) 2015 - Devin Smith (2nd round) 2017 - Ardarius Stewart (3rd round) 2020 - Denzel Mims (2nd round) 2021 - Elijah Moore (2nd round)
The curse is there…that’s a pretty terrible list of WRs…none of them did anything for any other team either…it’s not just that the Jets didn’t know how to use them. None of those guys went on to success anywhere else, including Elijah Moore, who was traded for. Sure different GMs drafted those guys, but two of them were drafted by JD, so he’s not immune to the criticism here. That being said, a receiver depends on the QB to get him the ball, and Corley has the best QB throwing to him than any of those guys had. Honestly, it makes what GW has done so much more impressive. He’s managed to ball out with the dregs we’ve had at QB…can’t wait to see what he does with a legit NFL QB throwing him the ball. But yeah, Corley has a chance to do well for two reasons. First, he has AR. Second, his game so far has mostly been to take a short dump off and make something happen. That should translate decently well into the NFL…he’ll get touches, AR will see him and deliver the ball to the right spot. The real question is if he can get the tough YAC against NFL LBs and DBs who are a huge step up from what he faced every Saturday at Western Kentucky. That remains to be seen.
I’m curious to see how much he needs to be schemed open and how much WR stuff he can do to get himself open. Deebo isn’t a great route running and rounds a bunch of shit off but he’s managed to become a big YAC maniac on routes that aren’t shallow crossers and bubble screens. Hopefully Hackett gets the ball in his hands short and often and lets him work up to running down the field. Knowing Hackett it just feels like he’s going to have him running flags and deep outs to the sidelines right away rather than playing in the middle.
It took him more than half a season to realize that Breece could catch and run so I don't know if it's worth hoping for.
I think he’ll be a good player, but I thought the same of Moore so there’s that. The other receivers I always thought were garbage.
As other have said, he went in the 3rd, but the Jets did try to get him in the 2nd. Stephen Hill, I had so much hope for that guy. Hands of butter, oh, well. It was fun for a couple of games. I always thought it was funny that his parents names are Henry and Karen Hill.
