NHL Best Bets for Tuesday (11/19)
Kenneth Le
The internet is wrong. Shocking, I know. But in the wake of the blockbuster trade that sent Tyreek Hill to the Miami Dolphins, many had the same take. It went something like this: “Hill is going to take the top off the defense and be used as a downfield threat for Tua Tagovailoa and the Dolphins.”
This tends to be a popular viewpoint any time we have a receiver with speed, but in the case of Hill this is armchair analysis that ignores two key factors.
First, we have to consider Hill’s usage over the course of his career, and especially recently. Despite not fitting the mold of a prototype No. 1 receiver from a height/weight standpoint, Hill has very much been that type of player for the Chiefs. Following a solid rookie season in 2016, he broke out with 75 catches for 1,183 yards in 2017.
Perhaps more importantly, he did so with an average depth of target of just 11.8 yards. That number hardly qualifies as a downfield weapon. Typically, we need to see an aDOT north of 15.0 yards for that type of player. In fact, Hill’s 2017 aDOT tied him for 53rd among qualifying receivers with Stefon Diggs and Amari Cooper, neither of whom would be confused with a deep threat.
To be fair, Hill did finish 2018 with an aDOT of 15.4 yards. But before you scream “gotcha” at me, that season looks like it was the exception, not the rule. The 2018 season was Patrick Mahomes’ first as a full-time starter, and he proceeded to take the league by storm with a historically good year. For Hill’s sake, this was not only his lone season over an aDOT of 15.0 yards, but it’s also the only time he’s topped 14.0. And in his six years in the NFL, he’s only gone over 13.0 twice. Entering 2022, his career aDOT sits at 12.3 yards.
Last season, Hill saw a target of 20-plus air yards on just 15.4% of his targets. Among the league’s 81 qualifying wide receivers, that ranked 62nd. His aDOT of 11.0 yards was the second lowest of his career. To be clear, this is by no means a knock on Hill. As I mentioned above, Hill has many of the traits of a true No. 1 wideout who is capable of making plays all over the field. And as we know, he’s one of the league’s most dangerous weapons with the ball in his hands. Therefore, it would make sense that 56.7% of his targets traveled less than 10 air yards last season. Get him the rock and let him make something happen.
Whether we like it or not, Hill just isn’t a deep-ball specialist. Now, that isn’t to say that he can’t or won’t make plays downfield. He certainly can, and those plays seem to stick in our mind’s eye. But a huge chunk of his work comes in the short and intermediate areas of the field, which brings us to the second factor we need to consider: his landing spot.
Tua Tagovailoa is not Patrick Mahomes. Duh. But seriously, we’re talking about two completely different types of quarterbacks here. Mahomes, as we know, is special. From an arm talent standpoint, he walks among the gods. That is not how we’d portray Tagovailoa. In 13 games as a starter last season, Tagovailoa averaged 7.4 air yards per throw. That was 36th among qualifiers. Only Daniel Jones (7.3), Ben Roethlisberger (7.1), and Jared Goff (6.8) averaged a lower depth of target.
This low air yards tendency was nothing new for Tagovailoa. In his final season at Alabama in 2019, Tagovailoa averaged just 8.7 air yards per throw. That number ranked 104th in the nation. Of course, where Tagovailoa lacks in arm talent, he makes up for in accuracy. He finished fourth in the nation in completion percentage at 71.4% that season. That trend continued into the NFL, as Tagovailoa finished seventh among quarterbacks in competition percentage last season with a rate of 67.8%.
So in Miami, we have a lower-aDOT quarterback who tends to be very accurate. We also have a head coach in Mike McDaniel who is coming from a similar situation in San Francisco. Last season, Jimmy Garoppolo ranked one spot ahead of Tagovailoa in completion rate (68.3%) and finished 28th among qualifiers in aDOT (7.8). Likewise, Tagovailoa and Garoppolo tied for 35th out of 38 qualifiers with just 7.5% of their passing attempts traveling over 20 air yards.
With this type of quarterback in place, Kyle Shanahan and McDaniel did not attack opposing defenses vertically. And that’s despite having two very speedy and athletic receivers in Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk. Instead, Samuel and Aiyuk were among the league’s least frequently targeted receivers downfield. Samuel ranked 76th among qualifiers at just 10.9% and Aiyuk was right behind him at 10.3%.
In Hill and Jaylen Waddle, it’s fair to argue McDaniel has an even more impressive duo than Samuel and Aiyuk, who are capable of doing very similar things in this offense. And sure, there will be downfield targets, but it’s unreasonable to expect Tagovailoa to transform into a completely different quarterback than he’s been both at the college level and pro level. And there’s nothing wrong with that, as McDaniel has plenty of experience coaching an offense with this type of quarterback in place. Instead, of trying to force a square peg into a round hole, McDaniel is catering to Tagovailoa’s skillset with a versatile receiver who excels in the short and intermediate areas of the field and also just so happens to be one of the most explosive players of his generation.
