There’s No Reason To Worry About Tyreek Hill’s Usage
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With the entrance of Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan, the NFL has gone through an unbelievable offensive overhaul. Young, “genius” offensive head coaches reign supreme throughout the league and innovation is king on Sundays.
But will that innovation come with a price?
As the Los Angeles Rams won the Super Bowl, Cooper Kupp placed himself on the top of wide receiver mountain. Surely his abilities had a lot to do with it, but Sean McVay unleashed him in a way the game had not seen before. Taking a player of Kupp’s skill and moving him all around the field, creating mismatches, and giving him usage from every receiving spot confounded defenses as Kupp put together an MVP candidate season.
The game-winning drive in the Super Bowl was astounding. With every other playmaker out, the whole world knew the Rams were going to Kupp. Yet McVay moved him around, put him in good positions, and let the receivers extreme skill take over. The rest was history.
But then, the next season, Kupp quickly found himself sidelined for the year.
The next season Mcvay’s protege, Kevin, O’Connell, took over the Minnesota Vikings, and perhaps the league’s most talented wide receiver. In their first full season together, O’Connell and Justin Jefferson made a laughing stock of the league while using the same sort of approach Mcvay and Kupp had.
Cut to this season and Jefferson has been sidelined most of the year.
Is this just a coincidence? Perhaps. But it’s not completely invalid to ask if the new way in which star receivers are being utilized could potentially be detrimental to their long-term health. And for Miami fans, as Dolphins’ superstar Tyreek Hill continues to march towards the league’s first 2000 yards receiving season, it’s not unreasonable to have concerns about his longevity.
After getting questioned about Hill coming up hampered in the last two games and his league leading target rate, Mike McDaniel tried to clear the air on Hill’s usage.
“I will say that targets are not the same as play-time percentage. If we deep dive into play-time percentage, I think there’s probably 15 to 20 receivers that play more than he does, which is strategic.” McDaniel said. “We want him to be at his best…He has an incredible history of being able to stay healthy and play in games. I can’t remember the – somebody could Google the stat up real quick, but it’s like a crazy amount – he’s only missed like two games or something. I don’t even know. He is a guy that does have to protect himself in the field. You guys saw probably on the TV replay how he got rolled up early, which was just unfortunate. But he’s at a really, really good juncture in his career. I think his teammates have expressed it. I think you guys can kind of tell by his energy. He’s at another level of professionality. He’s going to make sure that if there’s a will, there’s a way. I’m very confident he’ll take care of himself and we have a good working relationship, such a trusting relationship with the players and (Head Athletic Trainer) Kyle (Johnston) where we’re not going to press things too early.”
McDaniel answer is a breath of fresh air in the face of decades of “football players need to be tough” talk. He’s clearly aware of the situation, has a metric that he values, and they are prioritizing it in an effort to keep their best player in a good situation.
It’s hard to imagine the NFL will ever adapt the sort of load management the NBA has, given the personality of the sport and the importance of each game, but a closer eye on usage will surely be important as offenses continue to evolve and coaches continue to find more ways to use their best players. Like with so many other things, it feels like McDaniel and co. are already ahead of the curve on this one.
“You know what? Do you represent several different fantasy defensive teams?” McDaniel joked to the reporter who originally asked about lowering Hill’s targets and usage. “If you’re speaking on behalf of your fantasy defensive teams, then yes, that’d be a great idea. But outside of that, I think he’ll always be involved. We do manage his play-time percentage though.”
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