If you’ve watched one second of Miami Dolphins wide receiver Jaylen Waddle during his time at the University of Alabama, you already know that Waddle is Fast with a capital ‘F’. And if you’ve seen Waddle running routes in Miami Gardens at all this summer during training camp, you’d know that despite a 2020 ankle injury, Waddle is still incredibly hard to bottle up and perhaps even harder to run with in a footrace.
And now he’s serving up smooth routes in Chicago. The Dolphins didn’t give too many looks into Thursday’s practice with the Bears on social media. But they did offer a glimpse at one effective Waddle route against Bears former All-Pro safety Eddie Jackson in a one on one situation.
And so we’d like to confirm that Jaylen Waddle is still indeed Fast.
👀 @JBrissett12 ➡️➡️ @D1__JW pic.twitter.com/2zHidO5Yni
— Miami Dolphins (@MiamiDolphins) August 12, 2021
Would Waddle be drawing tight man coverage from Jackson in a game setting? Probably not with any level of consistency; but this is the kind of opportunities that Waddle will occasionally get faced with as a receiver who spends most of his time in the slot. Add in the recipe for a forced adjustment if the team puts Waddle in motion before the snap? The opportunities to put Waddle in coverage situations against opposing safeties has to be an thrilling thought for an offense that could manufacture very many mismatches in 2020.
This is the recipe for success for Waddle if the team isn’t going to play him outside and ask him to run vertically: they can do a lot of damage by making a player that must be marked pre-snap or otherwise end up creating a disastrous coverage situation for the opposing defense.
So sure, it’d likely be wise to take the specifics of this rep between Waddle and Jackson at face value. But Waddle’s physical skills are very, very apparent on this play and the Dolphins should earmark this play as a good illustration of, if they structure their offense well, how much damage Waddle has the potential to create for them in 2021 and beyond.