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2023 WR AD Mitchell *Transfer*

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ousux

ousux 5597

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The last 3 of those 4 were contested catches with a defender draped all over him that Mitchell just fought for and won. I don’t think I saw that out of any of our WR’s all year. Great get. 
 
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Whittington had a few catches where he had a DB on his back, think Sanders as well, but not many.
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PTINS

PTINS 3465

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12 hours ago, Reese Bennett said:

I don't know, but in this case I'm sure it would be accompanied by a faint whiff of chlorine which would remind me of skinny-dipping in high school.

if your skinny dipping memories include the smell of chlorine ... so sad 

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Wizlon

Wizlon 257

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7 minutes ago, TheMailBox357 said:

Anybody got this Scipio Tex article?: https://www.on3.com/teams/texas-longhorns/news/ad-mitchell-appreciation-projection/

 

@OB3 @Hookem2147

I had a chance to dig in on Georgia transfer AD Mitchell beyond just the highlight reels (it turns out that a player’s highlights show only good plays) and it revealed a talented late-bloomer with a lot of developmental meat still left on his skinny bones with a wide range of potential outcomes at Texas.

Floor? An injury cursed 2023 where he’s in and out of the lineup as the #3 or #4 receiver. Ceiling? A co-#1 wide receiver who grabs 60-70 balls and is a premier red zone threat and 3rd down weapon. That latter description would fit the bill for 2023 Texas very nicely. Whatever his outcome, the Texas receiver room got better. By virtue of talent and a complementary needed body type and play style.

Let’s talk about what he has been and might yet be. Appreciation in both meanings of the word.

Mitchell is a natural ball winner with a big catch radius and solid hands. He’s at his best as an intermediate receiver screening defenders and plucking the ball on the move. He should be fine settling into zone gaps and presenting a big target to the QB, but once a tall guy gets moving I like keeping him on the move. An obvious and natural post target – intermediate or deep. Shows ball adjustment.

Good body control. He can keep his base and stride steady while he rotates his body and plucks a ball. That’s a great asset and a major irritant to defensive backs in otherwise good coverage. Mitchell is a fully capable of winning contested catches downfield, but the reason they are contested is that he’s not a consistent separator. Yet. The casual comparisons to a variety of a speedy tall receivers who win downfield by sprinting past man coverage are not really accurate. He is in the AJ Green family of big skinnies, not Randy Moss. AJ Green’s family is still a good one to be in. However, when you’re 6-4 with good body control and ball awareness, a well thrown ball down the field doesn’t require ten feet of separation for it to be 6 points. An example of that here:

 

Long receivers who can keep their stride with their head turned watching the ball come in while subtly adjusting their angle are a bear to cover. As Mitchell evolves, he’ll learn to turn his head and raise his hands later and not give the DB a shot at punching the ball out of the basket. I think Quinn Ewers will appreciate a big target with natural adjustment instincts.

Mitchell is a late bloomer, not only in terms of his football experience and skill development, but also in his physical composition. He grew another two inches post high school at Georgia to around 6-4 and he’s still filling out his lithe frame. His speed, play strength, ability to maintain contested routes and overall durability will all improve as he crosses the threshold from a too-skinny 190 to 205. That’s a priority for him this offseason and it has to occur in the cafeteria as much as the weight room. Big skinnies don’t eat so much as graze and he needs to eat with the OL three times a week after lifting.

Mitchell saw playing time early at Georgia as a true freshman (29 catches, 426 yards, 4 touchdowns) after a rash of injuries in the 2021 offseason and one noticeable improvement from his freshman to very brief sophomore year was in his ability to handle press coverage. Press from a solid cornerback gave him some challenges and may still depending on the quality of cornerback. Two issues there: he was physically weak and could be manhandled and he lacked the technique to work through it. Interestingly, the worst thing any DB can do against him is show press, squat, but not shoot their hands and just try to mirror. He’s too quick and long. You have to put hands on him. He will improve as he learns how to play through a corner’s hands, not present his chest, and to use the advantage of his longer arms to dominate contact rather than let a little guy underneath him and get leverage. He still has room to grow here, but he has pretty good feet and that’s always threatening to a press corner who lunges and gives up a go to a long dude with agility.

How he sees and reads zone is more of an unknown, but he has the traits to bust one up.

After his promising freshman season, Mitchell’s injury plagued sophomore season was nearly a wash except for the opener and some late season playoff appearances where he was not in ideal football shape. This is what his 2022 looked like in terms of snap count:

  • Week 1: 36 (Oregon opener)
  • Week 2: 2 (injured ankle against Samford)
  • Week 3-5: 0
  • Week 6: 3
  • Week 7-13: 0
  • SEC Championship: 15 (Alabama)
  • Peach Bowl: 49
  • TCU Title Game: (can’t find exact number…looks like around 30)

The culprit was a pesky high ankle sprain followed by an undisclosed thumb injury. So his 2022 season was reduced to a 4-65-1 td performance in the opener against Oregon and a 4-65-2 td performance cumulatively against Ohio State and TCU in the playoffs. If you noticed his affinity for the end zone, that’s not a coincidence. On most of his 7 touchdowns at Georgia (on 38 career catches) he’s not particularly open on 4 of them. He just takes the ball away. Texas could sorely use that.

I see a lot of upside still in his route running and he has the right traits to grow here. Long guys with good feet are hard for defensive backs to calibrate properly and while Mitchell is not a speed freak, the aforementioned is how his sort of speed gets described as deceptive. Big guys who can get in and out of breaks get a lot of 10-18 yard opportunities.

Mitchell is a touchdown maker, intermediate chain mover and potential pass interference magnet. Particularly useful in important “gotta have it” situations – 3rd and 9, or a red zone touchdown shot on the opponent’s side of the field when he’s iso’d wide. AD Mitchell types turn field goals into touchdowns and punts into a new set of downs. Possession receiver is often used to describe a receiver’s limitations, but good possession receivers win football games. And there’s a scalable difference between the 6 yard nickel and dime type possession guys who are a dime a dozen and the ones who get you a contested 14 yard catch in front of a hapless corner. Besides, a natural contested catch winner has the potential to get you six points pretty much anywhere from the 50 yard line in.

Durability is the big question for Mitchell. That’s hard to handicap, but getting stronger and more physically mature always helps.

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TheMailBox357

TheMailBox357 213

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13 hours ago, TheMailBox357 said:

Anybody got this Scipio Tex article?: https://www.on3.com/teams/texas-longhorns/news/ad-mitchell-appreciation-projection/

 

@OB3 @Hookem2147

Can you post this Ian Boyd article?: https://www.on3.com/teams/texas-longhorns/news/how-can-adonai-mitchell-help-quinn-ewers/

@Wizlon @OB3

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Wizlon

Wizlon 257

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Spoiler

Steve Sarkisian finally made a splashy transfer portal addition to the Texas Longhorns’ 2023 offensive roster with the commitment of Georgia transfer Adonai Mitchell.

Mitchell was a former 4-star recruit but he gained a lot of prominence for his playoff catches during back-to-back National Championship runs by the Georgia Bulldogs.

Mitchell’s postseason production is actually amusingly predominant in his young career as a collegiate wideout. In two years with the Bulldogs he caught 38 balls for 560 yards and seven touchdowns. He caught eight of those passes for 149 yards and four touchdowns in the playoffs. Mitchell was only a freshman in 2021 and missed most of 2022 with injuries so his career hasn’t quite taken off like it’s been expected to do in 2023, but now we’ll look for that to happen in Austin with the Longhorns instead.

Texas will be banking on a breakout season for the playoff star as they reconfigure their offense in the post-Bijan Robinson era to emphasize Quinn Ewers and the passing game.

Finding a third receiver

One of the issues confronting Texas all season was the lack of a ready-made outside receiver to play in 11 personnel. They played Casey Cain in that role at various points in the season but he wasn’t quite ready to make big, winning catches against the better teams on the schedule.

Jordan Whittington ended up as the outside receiver much of the season as Texas lined up in 12 personnel on a majority of their snaps. They may use 12 personnel (two tight ends) pretty frequently again in 2023 with Ja’Tavion Sanders and Gunnar Helm both returning but there’s a lot of reasons to believe they’ll rely much more heavily on 11 (one tight end) personnel.

The most recent reason is the addition of Mitchell.

He has more pedigree and proven skill on film than all but save Whittington, Xavier Worthy, and Isaiah Neyor from the existing wide receiver corps and has some strengths those three lack. His profile at Georgia was basically what an optimist would have hoped to see from Casey Cain based on social media hype clips from practice. At 6-foot-3 he has the size to be a big target in the red zone and his footwork to get open is safely proven in several high stakes games against teams who can play grown man coverage.

He’s quick and skilled enough to get to his spots and is a big target once he gets there. There’s a fair amount of Collin Johnson to his game although he’s not as large as the former Longhorn and might be a bit quicker as a route runner. Like Johnson, his specialties include the back shoulder fade, the curl route, and slants.

How does he help Ewers?

Positionally Mitchell is an X receiver who will line up outside and on the line of scrimmage. He knows how to get a good release off the line and does good work in confined space when he’s in the boundary. His addition to the lineup in that role is perhaps a little bigger than it seems on the surface.

There are obvious benefits to Texas for adding him. He’s obviously a good player given his success at the highest level of this game and we’ve already discussed how Texas lacked a top line third receiver to make their 11 personnel formations work well last year. His likely position is otherwise likely to be manned by Isaiah Neyor, who’s recovering from an ACL surgery and may or may not be ready to stay healthy and play at his previous level.

The less obvious boost of adding Mitchell is getting his specific skill set involved on the weakside for Texas in the passing game. This was an issue for the Longhorns in 2022, most notably against Oklahoma State.

The Cowboys played bracket coverage in the boundary against Texas and generally shaded their Mike linebacker in the box, even against trips formations while manning up to the field receivers. They moved star nickel Jabbar Muhammad inside so they could hold up there and keep veteran safety Jason Taylor II over the top of man coverage underneath in the boundary.

Inside-Texas-diagrams.jpg

Trying to connect with Xavier Worthy on in-breaking routes against bracket coverage was a disaster, so they also tried to hit the running back underneath on various routes against the weakside linebacker in man coverage.

Also ineffective.

Late they started playing 2×2 so they could work the ball to JT Sanders in the boundary…

…which nearly tied up the game before the interception.

The goal was to make things simple and create short-range targets for Ewers to get the ball out quickly. You also wonder if throwing these sorts of concepts to Neyor had been considerably more effective in fall camp than they were in-season without him. In the Alamo Bowl against Washington Texas revisited some of these ideas with more success but still couldn’t dominate the game like say, when Sam Ehlinger would work these concepts to Lil’Jordan Humphrey in 2018.

With Mitchell in the fold, the boundary should once again become a concerning place for opponents when Texas can stack him there with Keilan Robinson or Jonathan Brooks and potentially Sanders. Meanwhile, the field will then boast Whittington and Worthy.

Will opponents still dare to man up the field receivers if Worthy and Whittington are aligned there? If Ewers can consistently hit them out wide, how will teams address Sanders in the middle of the field and the running back/X receiver combinations on the weakside?

Texas needs mega-growth from Ewers to unlock the weapons they’re collecting around him with a true, progression passing game. With the return of the entire offensive line and Whittington, along with the addition of AD Mitchell, all the pieces are in place if he can put it together.

Ian Boyd article @TheMailBox357 spoilered to avoid making someone read an Ian Boyd article without consent.

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ricky queso

ricky queso 96

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6 hours ago, TheMailBox357 said:

Can you post this Ian Boyd article?: https://www.on3.com/teams/texas-longhorns/news/how-can-adonai-mitchell-help-quinn-ewers/

@Wizlon @OB3

Now I don't read the man myself, but after lurking on this board for a good while, I feel comfortable guessing he's calling for a position change and projecting Mitchell as an all-conference linebacker.... in just under 4000 words.

If I missed on this, I blame the surly folk who misled me...

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