Absurd to judge him so harshly already . . .

Can we knock it off already?

How many times are people going to try to run a young receiver out of town because he’s not Jerry Rice right out of the gate.

And why the way, Jerry Rice wasn’t Jerry Rice right out of the gate.

It just seems there is a long history of people around here making young receivers piñatas when they struggle early.

This list is long over the years, and some guys never recovered from the early evisceration in the count of public opinion.

I’m not going to even go over the names because they have been through enough.

But the latest young receiver to now get raked over the coals way too early is Malachi Corley.

ESPN’s Rich Cimini wrote a piece on him, and this led to myriad bloggers writing about Cimini’s piece.

So if you Google Corley, you will get links to a slew of stories.

Cimini’s story was fine. It focused on why Corley didn’t play much last year, and he hit on the biggest reason – his route-running. He ran a limited route-tree playing at a low Division 1 program – Western Kentucky.

And Aaron Rodgers isn’t going to throw to you unless you are in the right spot, and when you combine Corley’s limited route-tree, with the fact that he played in much simpler system in college, the kid’s head was spinning last year with all he had to learn, so the QB had issues trusting the youngster to be in the right spot all the time.

It’s as simple as that, and this is very common with rookie receivers, especially those who didn’t matriculate at a major Power Five program like Ohio State.

Obviously, Garrett Wilson came in more advanced than Corley.

And honestly, even though he wasn’t a rookie last year, reading the tea leaves, it seemed like Rodgers wasn’t always comfortable throwing to Xavier Gipson, who went to 1-AA Stephen F. Austin.

So for goodness’ sake, can we give this a little time before we question whether Corley was a good pick?

I saw one article questioning whether trading up in the third round for him was a good idea.

Whatever happened to patience?

I think Fantasy Football has something to do with this.

Many sportswriters and sportscasters, especially the young ones, are obsessed with Fantasy Football, and obviously, receivers’ stats are a big part of that game.

So when receivers don’t have good stats, they can be subjected to heightened media criticism, unlike a rookie defensive tackle, whose work they don’t notice as much.

And Corley was highly regarded coming out of college, and considered one of the top receivers from the 2024 draft, so more was expected of him from the fantasy community than three catches.

Aside from working on his route-running and getting the playbook down, they also took it slow with Corley because they had plenty of good receivers in front of him, so there was no urgency for him to play.

So can we knock it off with the Corley on the hot-seat crap

Of course, he needs to have a good camp, but this idea that you can access a receiver prospect, from a low-level program, making a big jump to the NFL, after one year, is preposterous.

July 8, 2025

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