Rumoured 1st Rounder Reviews: Rashod Bateman
This series of posts focuses on those prospects who have been regularly mocked to the Ravens over the course of draft season.
I’m here to tell you that hope is real. Hope is what sustains us through the darkest moments of our lives, it can keep you safe when all seems lost. And as sports fans, hope is what drives our dreams of memorable seasons yet to come. We are in the season of hope as football fans. As a Ravens fan it can be helpful to remind ourselves of off-seasons past and the cliché that it is often darkest before the dawn. We are accustomed to watching our best depart in free agency before remembering that our redemption usually lies in late April. The draft is when our front office comes into its own.
But as Ravens fans we know that, for certain perpetual parts of our team, the winter has continued for the longest time. I’m talking, of course, about our complete and utter inability to draft a number one receiver. I’ve already bemoaned it in my post previewing Terrace Marshall as a potential first round pick. But before I dismantle our draft pick history at wide receiver and look for harbingers of our impending failure at the position in the draft, in an upcoming tendencies post similar to my piece on our history at defensive line, I wanted to post one quick piece on one of my favourite prospects in this draft – Rashod Bateman.
The Ravens very rarely select the receiver I would dearly like them to draft in the first round. I’ve had some misses – some guys I desperately wanted that haven’t turned out, Tavon Austin and Cordarelle Patterson come to mind of my first round disasters, but some have turned into very good young players in the league. I really liked Calvin Ridley and wanted him taken when we traded back to 25 in the first round in 2018, and a year later, AJ Brown would have been my pick instead of Hollywood. How the two would have fared in Baltimore, we will never know, and I certainly think there is still a chance that Hollywood at least begins to rise to his namesake’s ability.
This year, as I think is the same with many Ravens, the man I want to fill the receiver-sized-hole in our hearts is Rashod Bateman. As I mentioned, next week I’ll be doing another piece on the tendencies of our front office in the draft focusing on wide receivers, but let’s say for here, in this piece, that Rashod Bateman does not scream Baltimore Raven. I’m hopeful though that the Ravens will take another swing at the position early this year and that they change their modus operandi even slightly.
What I’m less hopeful about, is the presence of Rashod Bateman on the board when we pick at 27 this year. He seems to be rising and many seem to be catching up to what I first began to realise sometime ago, that Bateman is one of the best in this class. I first noticed Bateman in 2018 when I was starting to watch his rising counterpart at Minnesota – Tyler Johnson. He caught my eye as probably a better prospect than Johnson that year, and I enjoyed his development in 2019.
He had a down year statistically in 2020 but I still saw many of the same traits that made me a fan in the previous two seasons, as well as whole truck-load of legitimate reasons for that waning production. I am not here to make an argument for him over Chase, Smith and Waddle. I’m know I’m with the herd here but I do have them as the top three receivers in this class. But where I may differ from others is how close I have Bateman to those three as number four, and in a tier of his own amongst this talented receiver class.
What I’m saying is that, if I were the Ravens, and acting as they do hoping for significant value to fall to them at the bottom of the first round, Bateman would fit the bill for me as someone who will likely be head and shoulders above the other options staring them in the face at 27. I would even consider giving up our precious draft capital to go up slightly in the 20s to make sure I get him.
In terms of Bateman the player, he ticks many of the boxes that I usually like and perhaps sometimes over-rate in receivers. Call me old-fashioned but I like the attention to detail that the great receivers show. Jerry Rice (no, I’m not calling Bateman the next Jerry Rice) used to talk about the importance of the stem in route running. How the stem must be consistent every single time of the thousands that you run it – tip your hat to the cover guy because of variations in your stem and you will never consistently get open as a receiver. Bateman, for me, has a remarkably consistent stem at the base of what I believe to be excellent route running. I’m not sure he’s explosive per se, but he doesn’t have to be – he’s quick in and out of his breaks and you can see separation at the top of his routes consistently. This is because of his savvy and his technique. And not just on the zone-beating concepts that Minnesota ran so many of.
He just understands how to get open, he has an innate feel for it that I think Ravens receivers have lacked for a long time. He’s not exceptionally fast but has enough speed and when you combine this with the precise and sudden nature of his breaks, he’s a terror for defensive backs to stop. A sign of a really good receiver at the college level – he was open a lot more than he was thrown to.
The other thing I think I like a lot in receivers is competitiveness – I don’t see the Ravens prioritise this much in the scouting process with receivers which has always baffled me – but I definitely rate strength at the catch-point highly. Anquan Boldin, Bateman is not, but he has more than enough to go up and make contested catches and displays excellent body control adjusting to inaccurate balls thrown his way. He has really good hands and is excellent in traffic.
A quick list of other things: he has shown an ability to play all across the formation at Minnesota and actually thrived most when he was lined up outside more frequently – the Ravens need outside guys if you hadn’t noticed. He is obviously good at feeling for the soft spot in the zone but I’d be concerned if he wasn’t given the amount he had to do it in college. And he has looked excellent against press coverage, defeating physical corners with veteran receiver moves off the line.
He doesn’t do anything spectacularly well – I don’t think he’s lightning fast, I don’t think he’s particularly explosive and maybe that’s why some are under-rating him. Maybe it’s the down year in 2020 but it was a strange year, Minnesota’s offense wasn’t very good and they ran him out of the slot more, and I still think he got open more than his stats suggest. I also think he’s just a very, very good receiver. I don’t think you need spectacular traits at the position. They help, of course they do, but the best in the NFL at wideout don’t often stand out like that – they are usually, just good at playing receiver. That’s what I think Bateman is. Please make him a Raven, Eric.