Five things I care about
Zay Flowers’ key traits
The ability to beat man coverage and create something out of nothing. Those are key traits in Zay Flowers’ arsenal as a wide receiver.
How many times have you been able to assign those tags to a Ravens wide receiver in Lamar Jackson’s time as the starter? Not often; maybe a brief moment in time for Rashod Bateman to start last season before injuries struck, but that fleeting instant is just about it. Flowers showed off both in a major way in Week 12.
Flowers’ first touchdown came on an in-route on the goal line where he simply took the Chargers cornerback, Deane Leonard, to the woodshed in coverage. Perhaps Leonard was expecting inside help from someone who bit on the play-action fake but he was utterly overwhelmed by Flowers’ speed.
Flowers has been showing off his ability to beat man coverage in the intermediate area all season. The ball just hasn’t always come his way. With Mark Andrews now out of the mix for a long stretch, more of those plays will go to Flowers. He checked in with a team-high eight targets in Week 12. That was a huge development in his rest-of-season fantasy football outlook. The upside in his range of outcomes is still a bit underrated throughout the industry.
His second key trait and one that should be apparent to everyone who watches him helped ice the game. Flowers ranks quite high on the “moves different” scale. Next Gen Stats helped quantify how special he is in the open field in what was essentially a game-ending touchdown run:
Zay Flowers was running at 15.46 mph when he received the handoff on his 37-yard jet sweep TD.
Flowers had just a 0.7% chance of scoring a TD when he received the handoff, but a 70.8% chance of converting a first down.
Powered by @awscloud pic.twitter.com/wFkkYUDBeY
— Next Gen Stats (@NextGenStats) November 27, 2023
Lamar Jackson has rarely had another player with him who is capable of flipping the field and breaking the math. Flowers is that player. He…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/week-12-caredont-care-zay-flowers-ravens-hand-chargers-bouquet-of-ls-052654897.html
Author : Yahoo Sports
Publish date : 2023-11-27 05:26:54
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
