Neither man came with any sort of football personnel background. Brown moved over from the Browns legal department. DePodesta is a much more well-known name, but earned his stripes as a front office member for several Major League Baseball teams. Most notably, he’s associated with the “Moneyball” strategy that helped the Oakland Athletics acquire strong talent despite a small payroll.
Aside from quarterback, wide receiver might be the position the Browns were weakest in over the last eight seasons, but the new regime hopes it solved the problem by taking Corey Coleman with the 15th overall selection.
Coleman was immensely productive in his final college season racking up 1,363 yards and 20 touchdowns. His 1.7 touchdowns scored per game rate was the highest among the top prospects. Coleman underscored his impressive profile with a 4.37 40-yard dash, 129-inch broad jump and 40 1/2-inch vertical. Those figures were at or above the 90th percentile among receivers tested since 1999, per MockDraftable.
But even with all that data indicating future NFL success, many analysts questioned his ability to translate to the pro game, with many of the hang-ups a result of his role in the Baylor offense.
Baylor’s offense only puts together a simplistic route tree for its wide receivers. In the six games sampled for his evaluation, the screen, slant, curl and nine routes accounted for 82.6 percent of Coleman’s 121 charted routes. He will require time and seasoning in learning to run the full route tree, especially digs and out-breaking routes. But the Browns still have a true playmaker on their hands.
Top NFL receivers are often assigned similar route inventories. A prospect’s ability to “run the full route tree” is an overblown criticism recycled year after year by the scouting community. Projecting a player from the college level to the NFL is more about identifying translatable traits and their execution in their assignments. Coleman passes that test with flying colors. His success rate vs. coverage (SRVC) scores, which measure how often a player creates separation and gets open, indicate he could develop into a full-time receiver.
Coleman’s 93.3 percent SRVC score on slant routes was the best among the draft prospects charted. His blazing speed helps him cleanly separate from defenders on that pattern, but he brings more technique there. A decisive first step and quick footwork allow him to leave cornerbacks behind early off the line.
The productive Baylor product also scores out well as a deep threat. His 59 percent SRVC on nine routes was an above-average score in the class. Considering he ran a go-route more often than anyone in this class, that’s an impressive combination. Coleman also came in with above-average SRVC scores on post and corner routes. This is a player ready-made to screech through defenses.
Aside from running vertical patterns, deep threats also need to break back to the quarterback with proficiency. Defenders have to respect their deep speed, so they back off before the ball is snapped to give space at the line. His 81.8 percent SRVC on curl routes demonstrates his ability to quickly work back to the line of scrimmage, while selling the defender that he’s running a vertical route. Overall, Coleman’s success rate vs. coverage scores were some of the best in the class.
While playing in the Baylor offense often gets levied as a criticism against Coleman, Reception Perception illuminates a positive here. The Bears offense asks the receivers to read coverage just as much as their quarterbacks — to the advantage of their complicated screen. You see this show up in his SRVC against zone coverage. It was the fourth best mark in the class, underscoring his understanding of working through that brand of defense. Coleman knows where to sit down in zones to present his quarterback with easy completions.
While he comes with better potential as a route-runner than he gets credit for, Coleman’s biggest impact comes when the ball is already in his hands: 19 percent of Coleman’s routes came out “in space,” a play where the receiver is in the open field with a chance to break a tackle. On those plays, he broke a single tackle on 47.8 percent, and multiple tackles on 17.4 percent, giving him the best ratio in the class.
While he learns some of the nuances needed to round out his game, Coleman immediately brings a play-making threat to the Browns offense. For a team starved for firepower, it is an excellent draft choice. If Robert Griffin III can even come close to recapturing his form from early days in Washington, the two could start showing flashes of an offensive revival in Cleveland quite soon.
Matt Harmon is the creator of the Reception Perception methodology and a writer for NFL.com. Follow him on Twitter (@MattHarmon_BYB) and keep up with his analysis using the hashtag #ReceptionPerception.