What kind of receivers do the Sean McVay tree prefer?

The Sean McVay tree has been around for nearly a decade but what kind of wide receivers does it prioritize? @TheRealForno does a deep dive

The Sean McVay style of offense branches directly off of the wide zone offense from Kyle Shanahan’s version of the wide zone offense. The main difference between the two is that Shanahan likes to use a lot of 12 personnel and boot-action while McVay likes to run his offense out of 11 personnel.

Due to running a lot of 11 personnel, the offense asks more from the wide receivers from a blocking perspective. They are asked to get down and dirty when it comes to blocking while also being explosive down the field.

For this exercise, I look at all the additions made by teams where McVay and the two coaches from his tree that run a similar system in Kevin O’Connell and Zac Taylor prefer in their wide receiver. I chose not to include Matt LaFleur because his offense is much more reminiscent of Shanahan, someone he spent more time with before his one year with McVay.

The one interesting element with the position is trying to figure out what they prefer and if there were any trends in how they look at receivers. In doing so, they came out in four clusters.

  • Speed receivers
  • Possession receivers
  • Outside receivers
  • Outliers

Is there anything we can gather from these clusters? Let’s take a look by using testing metrics and Relative Athletic Score.