Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save It all starts with the speed. Even to the initiated, the speed is surprising. Take Derek Carr last week.
In the second quarter of the New Orleans Saints' 44-19 win against the Dallas Cowboys, Carr took the snap and turned his back to the defense for a play-action fake. By the time Carr snapped his head around, Rashid Shaheed was already putting pressure on the Cowboys secondary. Under normal situations, Carr probably should not have thrown that ball.
When he saw the coverage, Carr noticed the two safeties deep, the way Shaheed was technically double-teamed based on the defense’s alignment and figured he’d have to go for Chris Olave running a deep crossing route. Still, Carr threw. Because the speed is different, and it changes what the normal circumstances are.
“I was like, holy crap, he’s out-running them ,” Carr said. Shaheed hauled it in behind everyone in the Cowboys defense for a 70-yard lightning strike that gave the Saints a 14-3 lead. The speed is what makes the throw possible, but it’s everything else that makes it so dangerous.
Since breaking into the NFL in 2022, Shaheed has quickly established himself as one of the NFL’s premier vertical threats. In that span, Only Miami Dolphins star Tyreek Hill has more receptions of 40 or more yards (17) than Shaheed (13). His 70-yard touchdown was his sixth score of 40-plus yards.
Again, only second to Hill. Opposing teams must account for his ability to score from anywhere at any time, which changes the way the Saints are defended. But they must account for more than his speed.
They must account for the way Shaheed can simultaneously run and track a ball that travels 55 yards in the air, how he uses football geometry to his advantage when creating the leverage that rewards his quarterback’s blind trust. The speed is undeniably special. That is where it starts, and that is his most important trait when it comes to making his trademark explosive plays in the passing game.
But that is just the starting point. “There’s just guys that can do things like that (where) it doesn’t compute in your brain,” Carr said. New Orleans Saints wide receiver Rashid Shaheed (22) pulls in a pass over Houston Texans cornerback Steven Nelson (21) in the second half of an NFL football game in Houston, Sunday, Oct.
15, 2023. (AP Photo/Eric Gay) A ‘wicked combination’ Sometimes it’s subtle, and sometimes, like in Week 6 last year against the Houston Texans, it’s spectacular. But ask anyone who knows football, and they will usually land on the same elite trait that really separates Shaheed from other vertical threats.
“His ability to track the ball in the air, man, that’s impressive,” said Saints safety Tyrann Mathieu. Tracking a ball deep downfield “sounds easy,” coach Dennis Allen said, “but it’s probably not as easy as he might make it look sometimes.” Think about it this way: On vertical routes, Shaheed is almost certainly running 20 or more miles per hour.
He has to maintain that speed while simultaneously following the flight of the football and jockeying for position with the defender. He needs to understand whether to throttle up or down, or to alter the angle of his route to get where the ball is landing. Saints receivers coach Keith "Dub" Williams likened Shaheed’s ability to that of a good center fielder.
It’s an almost intuitive skill, and there are a lot of variables at play all at once. “When you’re running that fast, you have to be able to judge the flight of the ball at that speed,” Williams said. “Some guys can’t judge it well, so they end up maybe slowing down too soon, or over-running the ball, getting off track as they see it in flight — they’ll weave and get off track, and now they’re not at the drop point of the ball.
” For a lot of his explosive plays, it just looks natural, and it’s hard to see what is so special about it. But sometimes the skill shows up in an arresting way. In the fourth quarter of that game against Houston last season, with the Saints trailing by a score, they sent Shaheed on a simple go route.
Cornerback Steven Nelson was giving Shaheed a 9-yard cushion, and the Texans had two safeties playing deep. In a blink, Shaheed ate up the space between him and Nelson. Carr looked the play-side safety off, then came back to Shaheed.
When he released the ball, Shaheed was even with Nelson, but as the ball traveled downfield, Shaheed cleared Nelson by about 4 yards. A perfect throw would’ve resulted in a touchdown. But the ball was underthrown.
Shaheed had to quickly halt his forward momentum and curl back toward the hash. When the ball got there, he perfectly timed his jump and plucked it out of the air over Nelson’s fingertips for a 51-yard gain. “The ball’s in the air, some guys can track it, find it, locate it and catch the 50/50 ball, and some guys aren’t as good at it,” said quarterback Jake Haener.
And sometimes it’s not even about the contested catch part of things. Sometimes, it’s the combination of ball-tracking and elite speed that allows quarterbacks to do things differently. “I can throw a ball as high and as far as I want and make it really hard for (defensive backs), make it hard to follow the guy and still look for the ball,” Carr said.
“(Shaheed) can track it, see it, and go and find it. “He’s even a guy that can see it, put his head down, hit another gear and know where it’s going to be. That’s just a gift; man, that’s hard to teach.
” Williams wanted to make a point clear: There are probably a lot more people on the planet who can track a ball in flight than there are people who can run like Shaheed can. But when you package the rare speed with the ball-tracking skills? “It’s a wicked combination,” Williams said. New Orleans Saints wide receiver Rashid Shaheed (89) scores a touchdown while avoiding Arizona Cardinals cornerback Marco Wilson (20) during the first half of an NFL football game, Thursday, Oct.
20, 2022, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri) Leverage and angles Back to the 70-yard touchdown last week against Dallas. Not only would Carr not have thrown that ball under normal circumstances, he wasn’t supposed to throw the ball where he did against that coverage according to the play’s design.
“That ball is supposed to be caught in the alley to the near hash, and he threw it to the opposite hash,” Haener said. Shaheed ran a post route on the touchdown. Using his speed, he pressed on safety Malik Hooker, who was responsible for the deep half of the field to Shaheed’s side.
As soon as Hooker turned his hips to run with Shaheed, the Saints receiver snapped his route off toward the inside of the field. One player beat. Then, he had to navigate safety Donovan Wilson, who was playing deep on the opposite side of the field in quarters coverage.
Wilson took one false step to follow Chris Olave running underneath on a deep crosser, which didn’t allow him to get to the proper depth. Shaheed recognized this and flattened his route to take him upfield and give Carr a window to make the throw. “The way he ran and the angle he took was so elite,” Carr said.
“I was just like, thank you so much for seeing that the way that you saw it. I saw it, and I was like please hit it. He hit it, and I was like, 'Oh my gosh, this guy.
’ He’s different.” Leverage is an oft-repeated word in the Saints receiver room. It’s everything.
It is built into the play call, with players needing to understand leverage to make route combinations most effective. It is essential as the play is unfolding, reacting to the way a defender is positioned in real time. Shaheed, Williams said, has a great understanding of how to use leverage to his advantage.
Combine that with his speed, and then with his ability to track the ball in flight, and you’ve got a player who is a threat to score from anywhere on the field. “You’ve always got a chance at a big play,” Williams said. “So you keep on trying them.
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