Play like a Raven: D’Wayne Eskridge

In this series of posts, I explore the prospects in this year’s class that play like a Raven – the guys I think could have a red star against their name on the draft board in the Castle.

It is really hard to know what a “Raven” looks like as a wide receiver. Is it a fast, tall guy who can’t catch? We’ve had a lot of those over the years. Is it a fast, smaller guy that we draft in the first round but who doesn’t quite pan out as the number one receiver you would want them to be? I’ve been tempted over my years of doing this to place my “red stars” on many a wide receiver prospect but always struggled to make the final decision to do it.

It has certainly taken me longer to hone what I’m looking for at the wide receiver position myself, like the Ravens, I’ve had some glaring misses. The Ravens, in the draft, have shown no sign of moving off their obsession with speed at the position, even though the ultra-speed they look for is proven to give a prospect no major advantage at the next level. (I wrote about this last week)

I think I would move away from speed as the necessity that they think it is but we know how important speed on offense is to the make-up of the unit and how much it stresses the defense, especially with Lamar as our QB so it can’t be ignored completely.

But I’ve also started to crystalise what I would look for at receiver in my team construction, especially if I was running the Ravens. Why not look to the greats that we have signed or traded for over the years to find the prototype?

Anquan Boldin, Derrick Mason and Steve Smith Sr. all found different ways to catch the ball but they all had some things in common. They were all competitors, they were all as tough as the day is long, and they all had sky-high football IQs. They had different ways of getting the ball thrown their way, whether it be Anquan Boldin’s catch-point prowess or Derrick Mason’s flawless route-running, they excelled in at least one area of playing the position.

A guy that draws regular comparison to Steve Smith Sr. in this year’s draft class is D’Wayne Eskridge out of Western Michigan. I see the similarities and for me, D’Wayne Eskridge is my wide receiver “red star” this year, I’ll explain…

Before you look him up, if you haven’t already, and find that he’s 5’9” - know that Western Michigan lined him up out wide more often that not and over 4 times out of every 5 plays his entire career there. A big question will be whether he is able to consistently do this at the next level given his size and given that he was only in the MAC (before any MACtion fans come at me, I love the MAC just not for giving receivers a rigorous test of what’s to come in the NFL). I believe he can, otherwise I wouldn’t be putting my “red star” on him but I can understand if you don’t.

He also goes against the statistical analysis I did recently, and his numbers do scare me in this regard. For the only six games he played this year, he had very high yardage but it came with the double whammy of wide receiver bust stats – high yards per reception and high YAC for a wide receiver from a small school. The only saving grace, from a numbers perspective, would be that, had he played a 14 game season, like Ja’marr Chase did in 2019, they would have had similar numbers. But it still gives me pause.

Pause until I put the tape on.

The first thing you have to know about Eskridge, as context for watching his tape with, is that he was recruited as a running back, converted to wide receiver the minute he turned up on campus at Western Michigan, before also being switched to play defensive back and returner. He was doing everything. And consequently the kid had to get better at three different positions over his college career having entered school playing a different one.

It is for this reason that it is remarkable that you can see a relatively developed wide receiver on tape. In 2019 he played three games at corner and very little at receiver so you’re not looking at a lot of tape on him as a receiver but it’s enough to make a judgement and a projection about the steep developmental curve he is on.

Justin Melo’s excellent prospect interview series over at The Draft Network gave us insight into this important coach-ability trait in Eskridge who said:

“It goes back to the way that I like to work. Coming into my true senior year when I was playing cornerback, I put in so much extra time working on my craft as a wide receiver. I had to find room for the reps that I was missing out on. I wanted to continue honing my craft as a receiver as well. I felt like that was gonna be my breakout year. It was always inevitable, but a lot of man-hours went into that.”

He also talked about how, even when he was working out at corner, he was thinking about how to beat the techniques he was learning as a receiver.

In terms of as a receiver, what I see is an absolute weapon.

The first thing you notice about him, is how dangerous he is in the open field and the YAC he generates at an alarming rate. As I alluded to previously, this can be a warning sign for small school receivers but with Eskridge, you see enough of his receiver skills combined with his speed, getting him enough separation to add extra yardage after the catch.

The small schoolers that have been busts in the NFL, that I remember liking too, were flat-track bullies looking back. Guys who ran through and around porous defenses, taking advantage of their superior athletic gifts. You certainly see this with Eskridge, especially him running around defenses with his world class speed but you also see more than enough of his project-able traits helping him too.

He runs excellent routes and you can see him deploy the small adjustments necessary to get open at the next level. What is fantastic is that you can see what he talks about, using his knowledge of defensive back technique to defeat them when playing receiver. He understands the importance of using his hips to sell his routes and gain separation at the break-point, as well as making small head movements at the right time to look back for the football before sticking his foot in the ground.

He also runs a full route tree at Western Michigan and has clearly worked hard at his craft, making sudden and precise breaks to come back for the football. I would say he is a little bit of a straight-line athlete and I’d liked to have seen some more change-of-direction dexterity to him but that could just be me challenging myself to look for development areas too hard in a guy I absolutely love for the next level.

This working hard at his craft extends to his release package – he’s developed an arsenal of moves that each need some honing but that are advanced in terms of variety. What I love most about him in terms of projecting his ability to release at the next level is the physicality and toughness to him that belies his size. You can see this show up in his “get off of me” energy at the line in press but also in his blocking, which is willingly aggressive.

Some other miscellaneous things I like about him: it’s a tiny thing but he makes a great catch against Toledo down the side-line in the redzone, late in the fourth quarter with his team chasing the game. After the catch he throws the ball at the field judge, presumably to get ready for a quick next play but the official isn’t looking for the ball and it hits him. Eskridge appears panicked by it and quickly goes to pick up the ball. This was either out of concern for the official or concern for the fact that his team need a quick next snap. I either like him as a person out of this, or I like his football IQ.

I also enjoy watching the game against Central Michigan which was against the best defense in the MAC. His release package isn’t quite working against their defensive backs and he is struggling to get much separation. But he’s a competitor so you see him go back to the drawing board, change what he’s doing in his release and in his routes, and work to get open. He doesn’t just accept the down game amidst a season of star turns and run his auto-pilot, he looks for different ways to beat his man. He ends up with his most yards and touchdowns in a game all year.

He is physical, he is tough and he competes. He definitely has the requisite speed for the position and he is developing fast at the nuances of route running and press beating that signal success at the next level. Finally and most importantly, he has excellent pluck-y hands from what I can see. This is the one area where the small sample size hurts him as we haven’t been able to see what he does with a high target count over many consecutive games at the position, there are some concentration drops in the six games this year and he could use what body he has, better at the catch-point.

But for me, he is exactly what the Ravens should be looking for at the position, a combination of both what I know they love and what I think they should love when scouting receivers.