DeAndre Hopkins film review: He's still got enough juice to help the Chiefs
DeAndre Hopkins film review: He's still got enough juice to help the Chiefs
I looked at every 2024 route by the veteran WR to see where he wins, where he doesn't, and how he fits in KC.
Well, we can’t say that Brett Veach doesn’t listen.
Last week, I wrote that the Chiefs needed to trade for a WR as soon as possible. This wasn’t exactly an original thought, as basically all of NFL media has been screaming for the Kansas City to acquire a receiver ever since Rashee Rice went down with a season-ending injury. It’s a simple numbers game, and the Chiefs didn’t have enough bodies. Worse, they didn’t have anyone who could win against man coverage and they were a Juju Smith-Schuster injury (which of course immediately followed) from not having a single average WR active besides rookie Xavier Worthy.
Veach responded, trading for veteran WR DeAndre Hopkins.
While Hopkins is pretty clearly a short-term rental, Veach was able to acquire him without mortgaging the future (a 5th-rounder that only turns into a 4th-rounder if the best case scenario happens, a tradeoff any Chiefs fan would take) AND was able to save a little cap space in the process. That’s not a bad price at all, though it’s a tad steeper than I’d wished for when I mused about what WR’s Veach should examine.
Of course, said musings were before I’d spent significant time examining Hopkins’ 2024 film (contrary to popular belief, I do NOT spend much time watching the Tennessee Titans, for obvious reasons). And so now the question becomes a simple one; What he does he have left in the tank, and how does the way he currently wins fit into what Andy Reid and company need?
The only answers to those questions, of course, are in the film. So I watched every route run by Hopkins in 2024 (knowing he’s been pushing through an MCL injury) to see whether he is indeed an answer to some of the struggles with the Chiefs’ WR room. As ever, I reserved the right to change my mind on the “value” of the trade depending on what I found.
And after watching the film, I’m quite happy to say that I may have been a tad more lukewarm on Hopkins than I should have been.
Let’s talk about Hopkins’ film, how he wins against man and zone, where he doesn’t win at this point in his career, and how he fits as a problem solver for Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid.