Contextualization Of WR Chase Claypool’s 2019 Pass Targets At Notre Dame (4 Games)

Notre Dame wide receiver Chase Claypool is seemingly getting a lot of buzz at the 2020 Senior Bowl and even our own Daniel Valente tweeted on Tuesday that the Pittsburgh Steelers were looking forward to meeting with him while in Mobile, AL. With so much buzz about Claypool on this Tuesday, I figured I would take a deep dive into a large selection of his targets from this past season and contextualize them for all to see.

I contextualized all of Claypool’s targets from the four games Notre Dame played during the 2019 season against Georgia, Virginia, Navy and Idaho State and the results are below. It’s worth noting, however, that Claypool suffered an ankle injury early in the game against Virginia. He did play through that injury. In those four games he was targeted 42 times in total and caught 26 passes for 359 yards and six touchdowns.

Claypools average intended target distance on these 42 contextualized targets was 10.1 yards and his average completed air yard distance on his 26 total receptions was 8.5 yards. He averaged a healthy 4.9 yards gained on his 26 receptions as well. Claypool had two drops on these 42 targets that I contextualized and eight other incompleted passes were uncatchable.

Claypool possesses some deceptive speed and shows good balance and run after the catch ability. He measured in at the Senior Bowl at an impressive 6043, 229-pounds with 10-inch hands and 33 1/8-inch arms. He plays physical.

I didn’t find Claypool’s route tree in these four contextualized games to be all that diverse. He did, however, catch quite a few balls in all areas of the field and six of his completions were more than 20 yards down the field. He also lined up in various spots and on both sides.

It will now be interesting to see how well Claypool performs at the annual scouting combine a little more than a month from now. He certainly looks like a top 20 wide receiver in this year’s draft class.