• Early hype: Preseason hype led to Calvin Ridley being drafted as high as the WR13 in fantasy leagues.
• Just two top-30 finishes since Week 2: Despite a booming Week 1 performance, Ridley has struggled to stay consistent and relevant.
• Where do we go from here?: The Jacksonville Jaguars offense hasn’t fully clicked yet, so there’s still hope for a big second half of the season from Ridley.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Living up to the hype isn’t easy. Just look at every Star Wars sequel, every New Year’s Eve, every Philadelphia 76ers season, and ah, every Los Angeles Chargers season in recent memory. The hype isn’t something we’re meant to attain. It’s something we chase. We crave it, knowing that its touch rarely satisfies. There are rarely victors of the hype, only victims. The hype, more often than not ladies and gentlemen, is fluff.
The hype for Calvin Ridley was approaching nuclear levels ahead of the 2023 NFL season. The former Atlanta Falcons receiver was traded to the Jacksonville Jaguars ahead of the 2022 trade deadline and was reinstated into the league after being suspended for violating the league’s gambling policy. He was slated to be the missing piece for a Jaguars offense looking to take the next step with Trevor Lawrence at quarterback.
Slick route-running, deep-threat ability, and the production to match — Ridley’s talent was undeniable, but there were understandable concerns that he had barely stepped on an NFL field for almost two years. Nonetheless, his training camp performances and obvious chemistry with Lawrence did little to slow down the train.
In fantasy, Ridley’s ADP was rising on a weekly basis to the point where he was close to being drafted as a top-10 receiver. He was though to be a set-it-and-forget-it starter, and his Week 1 performance against the Indianapolis Colts was everything we dreamed he could be. An eight-catch, 101 receiving-yard performance topped with a touchdown gave Ridley 23.10 fantasy points in his season debut.
But since then, Ridley’s statlines have been fairly inconsistent and he’s earned a 63.0 receiving grade. Since Week 2, Ridley has finished inside the top 30 of weekly scoring for receivers just once, back in Week 5 against the Buffalo Bills, and he’s currently the WR37 in PPR scoring. But how? Why?
The Jaguars have Ridley operating as a traditional X-receiver, and they’re feeding him a stable diet of X-receiver-like routes. That means he’s running go-routes (24.3%), out-routes (11%) and hitches (22.4%) at pretty high rates. He’s an outside receiver through and through, and naturally, that means there aren’t as many wide-open opportunities for Ridley, especially since he’s faced press coverage more than any other receiver in the NFL this season. A lack of playmaking ability on the outside has shown up this season – especially in contested catch opportunities.
Ridley has 10 contested targets this season, 22nd most in the NFL, but he’s caught just two. A lowly 20% contested-catch rate ranks 81st out of all receivers meeting the minimum target threshold. He’s never been elite in contested-catch scenarios, but in his first three seasons in the NFL, Ridley caught 44% of his contested targets, which is markedly better. The ability to win contested catches is there somewhere.
Predictably, the routes Ridley has been targeted on the most are some of the more difficult pass attempts to make, and they’re the routes he runs the most, 68% of his targets this season have come on hitches, out and go routes. They’re asking him to do a lot of the difficult work that comes with being an X-receiver, and it would be harsh to say he’s not playing well.
Ridley is proving that he can get open on the outside, but it’s just a case of sometimes he isn’t a part of the progression or Lawrence would prefer the safer, between-the-numbers, option that Christian Kirk presents. Through seven games, Kirk’s 23.1% target share is a tick higher than Ridley’s at 20.2%. But Kirk is being targeted more on crossing routes and screens, routes that naturally garner more opportunities to catch the ball and make a play with it. Not to say that Kirk is the easy button compared to Ridley, but so far, he’s Lawrence’s preferred option.
The rate at which Ridley has been targeted on those more forgiving routes, the slants, the in-breakers, and crossers, is concerning. Just a combined 13.2% of his targets come on those routes, and he hasn’t been targeted on a single dig route (in route) all season. The diversity just isn’t there.
As much as it seems like it, this isn’t a eulogy for Ridley. There have been flashes of brilliance from the 28-year-old as anticipated. Ten of his 27 catches this season have been for more than 15 yards, and his route-running, especially in coverage, is still as good as it’s ever been. The film doesn’t lie, but it’s just not fully translated to consistent opportunities yet.
While that might be enough for some fantasy owners to cash out on, and understandably so, there’s probably more value in holding on to him. He’s playing well enough for things to turn his way eventually, but head coach Doug Pederson and offensive coordinator Press Taylor need to be more committed to making him a bigger part of the offense, especially since this is a unit that is still just 20th in EPA per play. They’ve yet to hit their full stride. It isn’t a case of an offense playing exceptionally well and Ridley being the odd man out. So there should be confidence in a talented quarterback and receiver finding that connection.
Ridley isn’t going to be the top-5 fantasy receiver that many wanted or predicted, and some of us will take that to the grave, but he still has an opportunity to be a real contributor on a weekly basis — on the field and in the box-score. Patience will likely be running thin for some, but hold just a little bit longer. I beg of you.
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