Matt Waldman’s RSP Boiler Room showcases a pair of plays where 2019 NFL Draft prospect Antoine Wesley, a receiver at Texas Tech, uses one play where he knows he’s not a target to set up a play where he’s the primary option. 

Keenan Allen is one of the best route runners in football. He’s not a speedster, but he’s as quick as a spooked deer. Allen leveraged that talent into his route running — especially his releases at the line of scrimmage.

Antoine Wesley has some deer-like quickness to his game. Like Allen, he displays a talent for using it at the line of scrimmage. He also displays an ability to set up defenders over the course of a drive, which you often hear about but don’t always see.

Below are consecutive plays; one is a run, and the other is a pass. Wesley uses that run play to condition the defensive back with one release and then pulls the string on him with a variation of that release on the following play for a touchdown.

Wesley’s work on these consecutive plays is an important display of conceptual skill, quickness, and mobility. Like Allen, Wesley lacks great deep speed. In a class stacked like a big and tall store on a sales weekend, Wesley will be one of the compelling draft season stories because of his skills, his tall and thin frame that will spur debate about his Body Mass Index, and his speed.

As an evaluator who values stop-start quickness and acceleration, Wesley has these two qualities and he knows how to use them on the field in ways that many tall receivers don’t. We’ll table the BMI debate for another time.

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