Is CeeDee Lamb Worth a Shot for the Eagles in the NFL Draft?
Despite the shutdown of sports in our modern society due to the COVID-19 pandemic, football fans are still excited for what will no doubt happen in less than two weeks (albeit in an abbreviated form): the upcoming NFL Draft.
The Philadelphia Eagles are sitting on the #21 pick in the first draft and Howie Roseman and company have got to make some hard choices – stay at #21 or possibly trade up to build the Eagles to be healthier and more competitive this coming season.
Carson Wentz is a great quarterback and has time and time again made things happen to keep the Eagles competitive, including pulling off an NFC East title last season with a banged-up team.
However, how long can the Eagles offense continue to be truly effective when the top three receivers are two TEs and a running back?
In order for the Eagles to win this coming season and move forward with a run to the Super Bowl, the top draft picks need to be focused on offensive firepower-meaning wide receivers. There are many WR’s out there in the upcoming Draft and plenty of talent to choose from. Players such as Jerry Jeudy, Henry Ruggs III, Denzel Mims, and Justin Jefferson are all legitimate first-round picks and certainly many NFL teams would love to have any of these players on their rosters. The one WR whom I feel really stands out is CeeDee Lamb. Maybe it’s because I live in Oklahoma and have seen him play in practices and in games make me biased. Maybe it’s his talent and speed that makes me biased. Maybe I am biased towards CeeDee Lamb simply due to the fact that he brings a “full package” of talent to the Eagles offense.
Lamb was a consensus All-American last season and averaged over 21 yards per catch and was able to bring in 14 TD’s for the Oklahoma Sooners. What is more impressive is Lamb’s reception yards: out of 1,327 total reception yards his yards after completion was nearly 700 yards. What this means is Lamb has a particular talent for turning a 10-yard pass reception into a 20-yard completion.
With a 1.46 second 10 yard split time at the NFL Combine in February, Lamb has shown that he has elite speed and is a great threat on the outside on deep routes and can also cut back into to attack soft zone coverages as well.
One question will invariably come up in regards to Lamb’s talent on route running: can he beat press coverages? With an extremely fast 10 yard split time, many NFL teams may choose to cover Lamb by pressing him up to beat his speed and in 2019 while at OU Lamb only had ten pass completions when pressed up. Lamb’s lack of experience against press coverages has many NFL GM’s wondering if he truly is a top-notch, first-round pick at WR. However, out of those 10 completions last season when pressed up, Lamb turned four of them into TD’s. Lamb’s size at 6’2″ and 198 lbs. also makes him a viable target on the edges and forces defensive coordinators to match up their corners using larger players to even out Lamb’s height.
Is CeeDee Lamb worth a trade-up in the coming Draft? Only The Eagles organization can decide whether Lamb is worth the risk or not.
The real risk is in letting a top-quality, complete package WR like Lamb getting picked up by another NFL team, which means that Eagles DC Jim Schwartz will again have his work cut out for him in putting together a strong secondary coverage to defend against WRs like CeeDee Lamb.
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Categorized:Eagles