NFL OTAs are less than two weeks away, giving the Kansas City Chiefs a chance to see all of the talent on the 91-man offseason roster in one setting.
This season’s team will not be short on rookies, and the Chiefs have signed a few interesting undrafted free agents to add to the pool of young talent.
Of the undrafted free agents, one of the most intriguing is wide receiver Jeff Caldwell from the University of Cincinnati.
An athletic phenom, Caldwell has jaw-dropping testing numbers that have drawn comparisons
to some of the best to ever play the game.
Being compared to Megatron from an athletic testing perspective is a tremendous compliment for Caldwell, but it does not do his current state of play justice, and is an unfair comparison to bestow upon him.
Calvin Johnson and Jeff Caldwell are not on the same stratosphere, but with some time and practice, he could find himself on an active 53-man roster one day.
Player review
A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Caldwell did not start playing football until high school and was not highly recruited out of college, playing his college ball at Lindenwood University in the Ohio Valley Conference in the St. Louis, MO, area.
Caldwell played three seasons at Lindenwood and had over 1,000 yards and ten touchdowns in his junior season. After the dominant season, he transferred to the University of Cincinnati, where he finished with just under 500 yards and six touchdowns.
At Cincinnati, Caldwell used his massive frame to become a red-zone target and a big-time mismatch.
He even had the speed and explosion out of his stance to create big plays out of the slot from time to time.
Caldwell’s highlight tape is full of exciting plays and is the kind of stuff that will get the NFL excited, but the problem is that his instances of brilliance were few and far between, and even on plays where he does win, there are signs of concern.
Caldwell is not a fine-tuned route runner and often struggles to create separation against man coverage. At Cincinnati, he relied more on his athletic ability than on fundamentals to win snaps, which led to highlight-level wins that were, unfortunately, few and far between.
The bottom line
The Chiefs are taking a very low-risk, high-reward lottery ticket on Caldwell, and he absolutely should be valued in the long-term. Athletes of his caliber are hard to come by, and with the chance that the organization could find a way to develop him into a future member of the 53-man roster, it will be worth keeping him on the practice squad once camp breaks.
Of course, Caldwell could make tremendous strides and make the active roster out of camp; it’s hard to be confident about predicting who the rostered wide receivers will be on the team behind the starting trio of Rashee Rice, Xavier Worthy and Tyquan Thornton.
He will never be Megatron, but Caldwell can find his way onto the active roster; he could serve as a point of comparison between the new and former offensive coaching staffs in terms of the ability to develop “talent” at the receiver position.
