2021 NFL Draft Guide Player Profiles: Curtis Samuel

Wide receiver Curtis Samuel has improved each season he’s been in the National Football League. In 2020, he had his best year of his career, as he caught 77 of 97 targets for 851 yards with three touchdowns. Being the dynamic playmaker that he is, he even got 41 carries, turning that into 200 yards and two touchdowns. In seven of the 15 games he appeared in last year, he had at least three receptions and three carries in the same game. His rushing production is a nice bonus as a wide receiver, but you certainly don’t want to hang your hat on that. Samuel signed with Washington this offseason, and Ryan Fitzpatrick as his quarterback. Is Samuel overpriced, underpriced, or priced just right for the 2021 season? Let’s examine.

I mentioned it earlier, but it’s worth saying it again. Samuel is a dynamic playmaker with the football in his hands. For his career, he’s averaging 10.0 yards per touch, per Pro Football Reference. If you look specifically at non-running backs that had at least 10 rushing attempts last season, only Jacksonville’s Laviska Shenault and Kansas City’s Tyreek Hill had a higher elusive rating, per Pro Football Focus (PFF), than Samuel. To compare it to a running back, Samuel had the same elusive rating as Las Vegas’ Josh Jacobs in 2020 (56.2).

After three years of playing out wide over half of the time, Carolina finally let him dominate the slot, and the returns were incredibly encouraging, and productive. Prior to 2020, the highest percentage of snaps he took in the slot in a season was 33.8 percent in his rookie year, per PFF. Well, in 2020, he took 71.4 percent of his snaps in the slot, per PFF. 

• Of wide receivers with at least 25 slot targets, Samuel had 4th-highest reception percentage (81.8%), trailing only Chris Godwin, Davante Adams and Cole Beasley.
• Overall, Samuel had the seventh-most receiving yards out of the slot
• Overall, Samuel had the seventh-most yards after catch (YAC) out of the slot
• Samuel posted an impressive 71.4 percent contested catch rate out of the slot

After being in Carolina, and fighting with Christian McCaffery, D.J. Moore and Robby Anderson for targets, a move to literally any other time would in theory result in more targets for Samuel. Well, Washington has a sneaky slew of pass-catchers, headlined by Terry McLaurin, Logan Thomas and J.D. McKissic, not to mention young receivers Dyami Brown and Antonio Gandy-Golden. At worst, with Fitzpatrick under his center and his propensity to target wide receivers in particular, Samuel is at worst the number three pass catcher on this team, but is more so the 2A option in the passing attack.

The sneaky competition for targets in Washington isn’t the issue that is most concerning. Remember back in 2019 when Samuel barely caught one of every two targets? There was some bad quarterback play, sure, but the Scott Turner offense wasn’t exactly friendly to Samuel. How much of the inefficiency can be attributed to Kyle Allen compared to Turner? That’s a viable question, but even in Washington in 2020, the only time the slot was fruitful for the offense was when Terry McLaurin was there. Here were the numbers for the two primary slot receivers not named McLaurin for Washington with Turner at the helm in 2020:

Courtesy of Pro Football Focus

Talent rises to the top, and Samuel should be better than those guys, but will Turner finally see how to best utilize Samuel? That’s the big question. Samuel is a guy who can get downfield, but he’s so much more than that, and with how dynamic he is, Carolina realized in 2020 that high-percentage passes to him in space are lethal. Take a look at the breakdown of Samuel’s targets, in terms of depth on the field, over the past couple years:

Courtesy of PFF

Fitzpatrick loves to push the ball downfield, and loves to throw to his wide receivers. That provides optimism for Samuel in terms of target share, as well as the fact that when the Football Team does send him downfield, he’s got the speed to make it work. Samuel should get plenty of slot snaps, and then play out wide in two-WR sets, so don’t expect him to come off the field too much in 2021. That’s a big plus as well.

Per NFFC average draft position (ADP) data at time of writing, Samuel is the 39th wide receiver off the board, essentially being drafted as a high-end WR4. At that point, you can’t really go wrong with Samuel. I have my reservations about Turner utilizing him properly in his second chance with him in his offense, but Samuel was impressive out of the slot in 2020, and if Washington capitalizes on that, he fills a need for their offense.

He’s a solid target to be your team’s WR4 but be wary of pushing him up too high into the WR3 conversation, as even in his best year as a pro, he was outside the top 25 in fantasy points per game (PPR), and prior to 2020, he never inside the top 45 in that metric.

Statistical Credits:
profootballfocus.com
Pro-football-reference.com
nfc.shgn.com/adp/football