5 Keys to Success for WR Breshad Perriman in 2021
Out with the old and in with the new. Wide receiver Kenny Golladay left for the Giants, and WR Breshad Perriman arrived in Detroit -- both by way of free agency this offseason.
And if the last name Perriman sounds familiar to Lions fans, it should. Breshad is the son of former Lions great Brett Perriman, who played wide receiver for Detroit back in the day.
Now, Detroit will find out if, indeed, the proverbial apple does or does not fall far from the tree. So far, it has been a similar type of journey for father and son.
Brett ended up playing for four teams in 13 seasons, while Breshad is on his fifth team in six seasons. For whatever reason, despite Breshad's size, physical strength and a career yards-per-catch average of 16.5 yards, he can not seem to find a home.
And, I have to admit, as a professional talent evaluator, nothing scares me more than a player who looks the part and has all the tools, but just can not seem to stick anywhere.
Detroit now hopes that Perriman can make some noise and build a legacy of his own in the Motor City. The younger Perriman signed a one-year "prove-it" deal worth $3M in March that may very well be his last big chance to audition for the rest of the league.
Players only get so many chances, and Perriman will be 28 years old by the start of this season.
I watched every play Perriman was directly involved with in 2020 -- a total of 62 plays via NFL Gamepass -- and based on that film study, here are the five keys to his success with the Lions in 2021.
1.) Perriman needs to study Detroit's playbook backward and forward.
It starts here. He needs to learn it and know it like it's his second language. If Perriman does not know the plays and the terminology like the back of his hand, the next four keys mean nothing.
2.) Perriman should reach out and talk to his previous employers and ask them why it did not work out with their teams.
He should take notes, and especially pay close attention to the commonalities between their responses. Perriman then needs to work relentlessly to correct those things, so history does not again repeat itself in Detroit.
3.) Perriman needs to develop chemistry with QB Jared Goff both on and off the field.
It was painfully obvious watching Perriman on film last year, as he attempted to work with QBs Sam Darnold and Joe Flacco with the N.Y. Jets. There were a good number of plays where the synergy was clearly not there.
There were too many times to count, where Perriman was not on the same page as the Jets' signal-callers and where he did not end up where they expected and needed him to be. It looked downright awkward at times.
4.) Lions offensive coordinator Anthony Lynn needs to put Perriman in the best possible position to succeed.
Lynn needs to talk with Perriman, and they need to determine what his best routes are and game plan around those routes. These aforementioned routes should be bubble screens, when he can use his physicality to his advantage and pick up yards after the catch, as well as quick slants and crossing routes, where he can out-muscle the smaller corners.
Perriman has a big frame (6-foot-2, 209 pounds), and he needs to be put in position where he can use that raw physical strength and his big hands to reach up and pluck the ball out of the sky.
Junfu Han, Imagn Content Services, LLC
Perriman was clearly at his best on film at the short-to-intermediate route levels, and things got clumsy looking deep.
Then-Jets offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains kept trying to go to Perriman deep anyways, and the more he did, the more clumsy looking it became. The Jets clearly did not play to or cater to Perriman's truest of strengths.
5.) Perriman needs to haul in the passes that are within reach.
Too often last season, he did not come up with the grab when he had a real chance at it. There were just too many passes that went off his finger tips or found the turf, when they could have just as easily resulted in receptions. There were passes he clearly could have dived and extended for, when he chose not to instead.
To put this into statistical perspective, Perriman was targeted 60 times last season, and he only managed to come up with 30 receptions. That is alarming.
Will Detroit be the place where Perriman is able to resurrect his career? Odds are it will not be, but there is always that chance.
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