The NFL’s best slot receivers

Inside wide receivers’ jobs are so important in today’s NFL, they’ve become their own position group.

Doug Farrar | Jul 18, 2016

The NFL’s best slot receivers /

In the 2015 season, NFL teams put five or more defensive backs on the field on 65% of snaps. Offenses also put three or more receivers on the field on 60% of snaps—up 10% from five years ago on both sides of the ball. That, as you might guess, is not a coincidence. Just as nickel is the NFL’s new base defense, the three-receiver set is the norm for even some of the league’s most notoriously conservative play-callers, and there are teams who go with empty backfields far more as a secondary concept than the gimmicky desperation set it used to be.

With these schematic changes comes the need for specialists at new positions, making the slot receiver the most obvious beneficiary of this paradigm shift—if not the slot cornerback or safety defending him. That’s why we’ve put both slot receivers and slot defenders in their own classes in our 2016 position previews.

Note: Slot tight ends were not considered for this list, since there’s a separate list for tight ends and playing in the slot is a mandatory requirement of the position at this point. The rankings below highlight the wide receivers who do underrated work closer in to the formation.

Just missed the cut

Brandin Cooks, New Orleans Saints: Cooks struggled with injuries in his rookie campaign but came back strong in 2015, and he’s got the speed and route-running skills to be a major player all over the field in Sean Payton’s offense.

Next big thing

John Brown, Arizona Cardinals: Bruce Arians always loves to have a speed slot receiver in his offense, and Brown fits the bill. He caught 22 slot passes for 344 yards and three touchdowns last season.

Published Jul 18, 2016

DOUG FARRAR

SI.com contributing NFL writer and Seattle resident Doug Farrar started writing about football locally in 2002, and became Football Outsiders' West Coast NFL guy in 2006. He was fascinated by FO's idea to combine Bill James with Dr. Z, and wrote for the site for six years. He wrote a game-tape column called "Cover-2" for a number of years, and contributed to six editions of "Pro Football Prospectus" and the "Football Outsiders Almanac." In 2009, Doug was invited to join Yahoo Sports' NFL team, and covered Senior Bowls, scouting combines, Super Bowls, and all sorts of other things for Yahoo Sports and the Shutdown Corner blog through June, 2013. Doug received the proverbial offer he couldn't refuse from SI.com in 2013, and that was that. Doug has also written for the Seattle Times, the Washington Post, the New York Sun, FOX Sports, ESPN.com, and ESPN The Magazine. He also makes regular appearances on several local and national radio shows, and has hosted several podcasts over the years. He counts Dan Jenkins, Thomas Boswell, Frank Deford, Ralph Wiley, Peter King, and Bill Simmons as the writers who made him want to do this for a living. In his rare off-time, Doug can be found reading, hiking, working out, searching for new Hendrix, Who, and MC5 bootlegs, and wondering if the Mariners will ever be good again.