The data agrees, Tyler Lockett is awesome

According to the Reception Perception data, Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Tyler Lockett is one of the truly elite players in the NFL.

Other than perhaps his height, everything about Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Tyler Lockett passes the eye test: speed, quickness, routes, hands, intelligence, work ethic. It is obvious to anyone paying attention that he’s going to be a fantastic player.

We now have data to back up what we already knew. The “Reception Perception” results are in, and they say that Lockett is every bit as good as we think he is.

If you aren’t familiar with “Reception Perception,” let me fill you in. It is the creation of Matt Harmon, who currently writes fantasy football content for NFL.com. RP was his big project before he was hired by the league’s media arm, and he still publishes it on his old website.

What is tracked is how often a receiver runs individual routes, as well as success rate vs coverage (SRVC) for each of those routes. Basically, it tells us how complex a receiver’s route tree is, and how good they are at getting open with each type of route.

The entire thing is rather labor intensive, so we’ve had to wait for Matt’s analysis of Tyler Lockett’s rookie season. As you can probably guess by the headline of this article, the results were extremely positive.

Lockett’s route tree isn’t particularly complex. Harmon believe’s that is mostly due to Seattle’s scheme and Lockett’s role in it. I tend to agree. As Seattle’s primary deep threat last season, Lockett didn’t get as many opportunities to run as many intermediate routes as he might have otherwise.

More important though was Lockett’s success rate with all of those routes. He had an extremely high success rate on all those nine routes compared to the rest of the NFL.

Perhaps more important is his high success rate on curl routes. That show’s that Lockett is both good at selling to defenders that he’s going deep, and sudden enough in his movements to take advantage of it.

Harmon claims that success on curl routes is a good indicator of future success for wide receivers since it is a good indicator of true route running skill. Lockett’s SRVC on curl routes was the 2nd highest among rookie receivers last season.

Lockett was a pre-draft miss for me (apparently it was for Harmon too). I saw his struggles against press coverage in college and believe that would greatly hold him back in the NFL. Clearly I was wrong, as somehow Lockett turned what was a major weakness in college into a strength in the NFL.

Lockett’s ability to get open against any type of coverage is incredibly promising. It shows that there isn’t going to be a simple way for the NFL to adapt that’ll shut him down.

Next: The importance of Ahtyba Rubin

Lockett is only going to get better, and there’s no reason to believe that he isn’t going to have a massive season for the Seahawks in 2016.