Vernon Davis’ Run Blocking Key for Washington Redskins

Davis as a Receiver

In 2015, Davis played in 622 offensive snaps. With the Broncos, his main three routes were spot- , crossing- , and seam-routes. These were run mainly from a tight bunch formation.

Here are two great examples of Davis’ ability to catch the ball in traffic. The first pass is thrown into a very tight window, and he does an excellent job of maintaining possession. In the second pass, Brock Osweiler throws a pass to Davis while a defender drapes over him and he is still able to hold onto the ball.

Vernon Davis is 32 years old, but he is still surprisingly quick off the snap and into the open field. He’s clearly not as fast as he used to be, but he definitely still has good acceleration. Watch Davis on this crossing route versus the Raiders’ Cover 3 defense. Davis gets behind #53 Malcolm Smith who is dropping into his middle hook zone for a long reception.

At the end of the play, Davis does something that makes me cringe: he runs backwards. After years of watching Antwaan Randle El do the same thing, this makes me furious. He simply needs to take the ball out-of-bounds as he loses three yards by doing this move.

In this next play, Vernon Davis uses his veteran ability to get open against a Cover 2 defense. Davis is running a seam route up the right hashmarks. His reads are simple: (a) single-high safety -> stay on the hashmarks, (b) split safeties -> turn the seam into a post-route and cut between them. Davis wisely chooses the latter and finds the hole between the safeties for a large gain.

Drops Have Always Been Davis’ Enemy

With data collected from SportingCharts.com, here is a graph I created comparing the number of drops Davis has had throughout his ten year career (burgundy) to his drop rate as a percentage of targets (gold).

Davis has averaged a 7% drop per target rate throughout his entire career. If 2015 was an average year for dropped passes, Davis would consistently be ranked around 8th worst in the NFL for drop percentage for tight ends receiving 25+ targets.

Ironically, last season while Davis’ drop rate was comparatively low, he was remembered by many fans for this horrendous drop against the Oakland Raiders on 4th down with only 3:54 left in the game.

A terrible play, no doubt, but he actually played relatively well considering this horrible mental error catching 7 of his 8 other targets for 74 yards.

Overall, it’s Vernon Davis’ willingness to run block that sets him apart from other tight ends. Even though Davis does not have the most reliable hands, he is still a threat that the defense has to account for in the passing game due to his speed in the open field. In my opinion, he will be a great asset to Bill Callahan’s run scheme that uses multiple tight ends to block for the running back.

Follow Samuel Gold on Twitter: @SamuelRGold.