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Hands

Jaelen Strong’s hands are the part of his game that concern me the most. He’s unconfident when reaching out for the ball and will regularly need to bring the ball into his body in order to really secure it. His lack of consistent hand technique is going to put even more pressure on him to excel at route running, so he has the space and time to reel in the ball and get control early on in his NFL career.

You can see that Strong claps his hands onto the ball instead of using the traditional finger catching. The ball shakes a slight amount when its caught, which gives it a small opening to be knocked out. That’s something a team doesn’t want to see.

Strong’s hands are very uncoordinated and flailing wildly as he unsuccessfully tracks this ball.

Despite playing for a decently contested ball, Strong waits for the ball to arrive into his chest before corralling it against his body.

Strong starts lined up in between two receivers on the left side, making a catch over the middle with nobody in his area and with no contest. Still, the ball is pulled into Strong’s chest in order to gain control. Strong’s lack of confidence in his hands will immediately become a problem in the NFL if he becomes asked to go over the middle on whatever team he ends up on as hard hits from Linebackers begin popping the ball right out from his chest.

On this play, which was also shown in the route running section from a different angle, Strong unnecessarily jumps in order to catch the ball at chest level.

It doesn’t seem like this is an unteachable trait for Strong, he’s more than willing to high point and extend for the ball when he’s making contested Fade catches, so the issue does look like it can be fixed with time. However, this isn’t the only place where his lack of confidence with his hands has issues. Strong’s also not good at using his hands to remove defenders arms from his chest and his timing with swipes is generally late or not happening. Luckily for him, he has enough power to run through defenders from time to time, but it’s an issue that could really threaten his impact on an NFL field when playing against aggressive corners.

In these plays, Strong’s lack of hand-fighting allowed the DB to get physical without him making any significant attempts to get the contact off preemptively or punishing them with any kind of grab and pull move. It’s hard for a WR to make it on the outside in the NFL if they can’t get the DB’s arms off of them in these situations.

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