Renner: Don't forget about Ja'Marr Chase — PFF's WR1

When following college football closely throughout a season, it’s very easy to become a prisoner of the moment. Scouting, at its core, is about eliminating any such biases. Seeing the tree through the leaves is always the goal.

With offensive explosions the norm for the 2020 season, receivers were putting up ungodly numbers across the college football landscape. Alabama’s DeVonta Smith rewrote record books en route to becoming the first receiver to win a Heisman in nearly three decades.

Even after all that, though, PFF’s WR1 is still a guy who didn’t take a single snap in 2020. LSU’s Ja’Marr Chase may not have played a down of football this past season, but his talent didn’t go anywhere. No, like pretty much every single 20-year-old, Chase is still getting better after winning the Biletnikoff Award as a true sophomore. The player who put up 84 catches for 1,780 yards with 20 touchdowns and only five drops as a 19-year old is still tops on our list. And here’s why.

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Where Chase Wins

In short: everywhere. It’s the reason we feel so confident about Chase’s game translating to the NFL. The biggest question mark with a lot of prospects is, “Can they win when isolated one-on-one in the NFL?” Because in a lot of roles, we don’t get to see that. But that was almost entirely Chase’s role in the LSU offense.