Crossroads Wide Receiver Season

Too Deep Zone is changing its programming format. It's now a 24/7 Keon Coleman news channel!

Keon Coleman notes! Keon Coleman quotes! Keon Coleman training camp highlights and lowlights! Too Deep Zone will be the Mayo Clinic of Coleman spin-doctoring. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and Buffalo Rumblings will be coming here for Coleman scuttlebutt. We will provide around-the-clock Coleman updates live from the excuse-making cortex of Brandon Beane’s brain.

“Buffalo Bills WR Keon Coleman Dominates Training Camp Headlines on Day 1,” reported Matt Byham of Buffalo Rumblings from the opening of Bills camp on Wednesday. Byham and his headline writer were not exaggerating: both Beane and Josh Allen gave lengthy oratories extolling Coleman’s virtues, while the receiver himself was busy on the field.

Coleman dropped his first short pass from Allen; it “fell incomplete,” Byham diplomatically reported. “Allen went right back to Coleman on the very next play,” Byham continued, “which was a far more difficult pass and catch down the right side of the field that Coleman hauled in to applause.” 

After watching and listening to the video in the preceding link, I think Coleman hauled it in, and there was much rejoicing would better represent the crowd’s reaction.

Coleman has also been returning punts. That sounds like an indication that the third-year receiver is drifting out of his team’s offensive plans, not a sign that he is poised for a breakout. But things may look different after we spend a few weeks mainlining unadulterated Coleman takes. 

“Reminder, drops happen,” friend-of-the-Zone and fantasy expert Cameron White posted on Bluesky. “Here’s a drop from Bills’ WR Keon Coleman. I like seeing him work in motion and be targeted in the short area.”

Mmmm, yeah, that’s the good stuff: a Coleman’s bad play is secretly a good sign speedball. Inject that straight into my veins. I can now smell colors, though I cannot feel my fingers.

Both Byham and White are offering sound advice, of course: don’t overreact to video of a dropped pass on a social feed; keep an open mind about camp battles and polarizing players. It’s just amusing that Coleman became the lightning rod for such conversations before Allen could even break his first sweat of the summer.

Coleman’s most vocal cheerleader so far has not been a beat writer or fantasy analyst, but the guy who signs his checks. That’s subject to change, however, considering that fellow’s fickle nature. 

“If you know Keon the way I know him and his teammates know him,” Beane said last week, per Byham, “you feel a guy who’s really matured — the light has come on, he understands some of the things he could’ve done better along the way.” Beane then went on and on and on about how well Coleman handled adversity, “including the negativity from the press-conference thing.”

LOL.

The “press-conference thing,” of course, was the January announcement of Beane’s promotion to El Presidente of Upstate New York, when Bills owner Terry Pegula blamed an unnamed-and-newly-unemployed coach for the decision to draft Coleman. 

Per the revised Pegula-Beane magical realist history of events, this mystery coach, whose name presumably rhymed with Gone McHermit, pushed for the Florida State receiver with the 4.61-second Combine forty. The offensive coordinator at the time, current head coach Joe Brady, was tied to  a chair and had no say in the decision. This mysterious saboteur pointed a shotgun at a litter of puppies and ordered Beane to trade down twice, then select Coleman, even as Xavier Worthy, Ricky Pearsall and Xavier Legette came off the board. More on all of them in a few moments.

The press-conference thing “raised several more questions than it answered,” Dan Pizzuta dryly noted in the FTN Almanac. Pegula's unsolicited defense of Beane certainly cast Coleman as a mistake that got someone fired, even though the person who made the mistake got promoted, and he now gets to pass public judgment upon how maturely Coleman handled being cast as a mistake. Do you feel like you are hallucinating yet? 

Beane wants to maintain the fiction that Coleman was a failure of the previous regime, whoever those guys were, while sharing credit with Brady for nurturing and developing Coleman if and when the receiver turns the corner on his career. It’s a blame deflection/credit allocation 7-10 split. If it turns into a gutter ball, no worries: the owner himself already thinks it was Coach Notme’s fault. 

If the light has really come on for Coleman, then he should also have figured out that his allies in the organization will disavow him at the first sign of trouble.

"He's still got to go out there and do it," Beane said at the end of last week’s State of the Coleman Address. "And nothing is given.” 

Coleman really could be turning things around, though his upside – for the 2026 Bills and any team with a better receiver corps than the Dolphins or Raiders – is probably as a WR3 who posts up smaller defenders. Still, you should remain wary of putting much stock in anything you see and hear from the opening days of training camp. Especially about wide receivers. And triple-especially when Brandon Beane’s mouth is open. 

Xavier Legette and the Carolina Catastrophes

The start of camp belongs to Crossroads Receivers like Coleman: former high draft picks with once-lofty expectations who are now in danger of losing starting jobs, offensive roles or even roster spots. 

Wide receivers are always the undisputed stars of the early days of training camp. They can get open and make spectacular catches in 1-on-1’s and 7-on-7’s, wearing compression shorts and shells, when everyone else on the field is just shadow-boxing. 

When superstars like Jaxon Smith-Njigba make such catches, it’s dog-bites-man non-news. But when it’s someone like Coleman, with a semi-famous name and the whiff of desperation/disappointment/controversy about him, a noteworthy day of midsummer practice can activate local fans, fantasy speculators, draftniks who are still grinding their 2024 axes, and soap opera junkies like me.

Take Xavier Legette, one of the receivers the Bills passed over when they were forced by some shadowy puppet master to select Coleman.

“Sunday morning, in the rain, Xavier Legette reminded people of what he's capable of,” wrote friend-of-the-Zone Darin Gantt for the Panthers website last Sunday. “The third-year wideout made several nice grabs on a day when the offense as a whole was moving well.

“The touchdown catch in the back of the end zone during red zone work was nice, but he made plays throughout the day. In one-on-ones, he overcame a handsy coverage from cornerback Robert Rochell, and laid out to bring in a deep ball down the sidelines.”

"It's business as usual for X," Dave Canales said of Legette at Friday night’s open practice, per Anthony Rizzuti of Panthers Wire. "We have big plans for him, he's got big plans for himself and he's been working hard at it."

The Panthers drafted Legette out of South Carolina with the 32nd pick in the 2024 draft. Legette caught 49 passes but dropped seven as a rookie. Last offseason, he bulked up as if he were trying to fit into one of Kelvin Benjamin’s old uniforms. Pro Football Reference lists Legette at 227 pounds, but he looked like an edge rusher playing wide receiver last year. He caught just 35 passes in 2025, in part because Tet McMillan seized the go-to receiver role, but mostly because Legette ran like a moving van on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Legette was dreadful in 2025. His DYAR of -96 was the sixth-worst figure among qualifying wide receivers. Against the Cardinals in Week 2, he caught one pass for minus-2 yards on eight targets. Against the Cowboys in Week 6, he did this. By the end of the season, his role in the offense was reduced to running a few short stop routes in the middle of the field against zone coverage. Legette couldn’t get open, sometimes went backwards when searching for YAC and was incapable of getting both feet down on catches along the sidelines. 

Like Coleman, Legette appeared to be working his way out of the Panthers’ plans at the start of the offseason. That changed last Wednesday, when third-round pick Chris Brazzell (who also drew early-camp accolades) suffered a torn LCL. Brazzell will have surgery and miss the 2026 season. 

McMillan, back from a minor minicamp foot injury, remains the Panthers’ undisputed go-to receiver. Jalen Coker, who outperformed Legette in 2025, earned an offseason contract extension for WR2 money. Brazzell was battling Legette for the WR3 role and the “big plans” which came with it. That role is now Legette’s to lose. That’s bad news: the Panthers are suffering through an injury-plagued summer (Brazzell, right tackle Taylor Moton, edge Nic Scourton), and their current state of mediocrity is built upon high draft picks receiving starting jobs by default and then playing just well enough to not lose them.

It’s worth noting that both Legette and Coleman are huge receivers. It’s easy for big guys to stand out in camp, by sheer nature of being big guys: they are easier to single out and spot on the far side of a practice field. Taller receivers also have an edge in 1-on-1 drills against undrafted/journeyman 5-foot-11 cornerbacks. 

Coleman carries the immaturity label, while Legette is a quirky country guy: a personality trait or two can make a Crossroads Receiver more quasi-newsworthy. So can injury news. Rest assured that the 49ers are in the on-deck circle. 

Despite Canales’ “big plans,” expectations for Legette are now tempered. Legette's an easy guy to root for. We may see a little of him in Thursday's Hall of Fame Game. I don’t think he’s someone we’re going to be talking about when October arrives. The way Panthers camp has been going, I just hope he doesn’t ride his horse off a canyon wall or something.

Ricky Pearsall: Cursed Among the Cursed

Ricky Pearsall, another of the players selected ahead of Keon Coleman, is a Crossroads Receiver for a different reason. 

When you play for the 49ers, nowhere is safe. Not even the crossroads. Especially the crossroads. 

Sorry. I hesitate to make light of Kyle Shanahan’s car accident, because his injuries were significant, and the way news of it has dribbled out we are likely to soon learn that Shanny was carrying canisters of nitroglycerine and red kryptonite when he swerved into a petting zoo while texting “u still mad bruh” to Brandon Aiyuk. But if we are gonna rip players for driving dangerously, we should also rip middle-aged Leaders of Men for taking their eyes off the road to crank up the Spotify volume when “Drops of Jupiter” comes on. 

Get well soon, Shanny, and kudos for yanking off some of the privilege blankets you were swaddled in and admitting that you were driving like a yutz. But Too Deep Zone, unlike the Bay Area press and the California Highway Patrol, is all about that tough love. Your insurance provider may soon love you even harder. You can afford the jacked-up premiums. 

Where were we? Oh yes, Ricky Pearsall. He’s hurt again. It was first reported as “swelling in the posterior cruciate ligament in his right knee.” Then the prognosis got worse and worse by the hour. By Saturday, Pearsall was on IR and scheduled for season-ending PCL surgery. By the time you read this, he may have been wiped from existence by some time-travel anomaly. Which will make this segment rather confusing, unless it too has been wiped from existence. 

Pearsall and Mike Evans were the 49ers' projected starting wide receivers entering camp. Christian Kirk was the top competitor for the slot role. But you will never guess what happened to Kirk: he strained his calf at the start of camp, then vanished into the ether. 

Kirk started his career as a Crossroads Receiver with the Cardinals, made good with statistically-solid 2021 and 2022 seasons, and spent the last three years as an oft-injured veteran who used to be good, which is its own separate subcategory. The 49ers may have signed Kirk as a ritual sacrifice to the injury demigods. If so, it didn't work.

The Pearsall/Kirk injuries have allowed second-round pick De’Zhaun Stribling to shine. I like Stribling’s tools/tape/personality combination as a prospect, but he’s probably not ready to be forced into a major role on a team with playoff aspirations. Especially if the WR1 may be turning into a bronze bust before our eyes.

Evans “let a Mac Jones pass bounce off his chest, and then couldn't catch up to a deep throw by Purdy,” per a practice report by SI’s Grant Cohn last Monday. “Evans ran a post route, but simply couldn't run fast enough to catch up to the pass, which was well thrown. 

“Purdy has to get a feel for Evans' speed, or lack of it. And the 49ers have to get a feel for how to use Evans at this stage of his career.”

Ouch! It’s wise to remember the theme of today’s sermon: Thou Shalt Not Read Too Much into Thine Early Training Camp Reports. It’s also wise to remember that Evans turns 33 in a few weeks and is coming off the first injury-ruined season of his career. As Zane Gelphman noted at FanSided, when discussing Kirk’s injury: “The last thing Purdy needs is more aging weapons … Players with dynamic potential like De'Zhaun Stribling, Ricky Pearsall, and Kaelon Black represent something the San Francisco offense had none of last year: playmakers.”

The 49ers signed Deebo Samuel on Friday, taking pressure off Stribling to become an immediate WR2 while giving Purdy another aging weapon. Deebo had his moments for the Commanders last year, but he’s always a little nicked up and perpetually perturbed about something. He’s lost much, though not all, of the power/elusiveness combination that made him an archetypal slot playmaker. The 49ers know these things better than anyone, which is why they drafted Pearsall in 2024 and let Deebo walk in 2025. 

Pearsall was getting some positive reviews at the start of camp; again, the theme of this feature is that receivers like Pearsall usually get positive reviews at the start of camp. Pearsall appears to just be cursed, even by 49ers standards. 

But the whole “crossroads” metaphor implies a curse, doesn’t it? 

Isaiah Worthy and his Worthy Competition

The best argument in defense of the Bills drafting Coleman in 2024 is the fact that the receivers they passed over, even Xavier Worthy, haven’t done that much. Check out everyone’s career regular-season numbers:

Xavier Worthy: 101 catches, 1,170 yards, 11.6 yards per catch, 7 receiving touchdowns.

Keon Coleman: 67 catches, 960 yards, 14.3 yards per catch, 8 receiving touchdowns.

Xavier Legette: 84 catches, 860 yards, 10.2 yards per catch, 7 receiving touchdowns.

Ricky Pearsall: 67 catches, 928 yards, 13.9 yards per catch, 3 receiving touchdowns.

Coleman’s a pea in this particular pod. Heck, the Bills may have been wise to trade down and add some extra draft picks rather than rolling the dice on Worthy’s speed, Pearsall’s quickness or Legette’s supersized Deebo-ness.

That argument collapses rather quickly. Worthy would probably be more valuable to Josh Allen as a decoy than Coleman has been as a target. The extra draft picks were spent on non-contributors like DeWayne Carter and Sedrick Van Pran-Granger. The Bills, always a few plays away from the Super Bowl, just might have gotten those few extra plays from Worthy in 2024 and 2025.

Still, Worthy took a step back in 2025 after a promising rookie year. He caught just nine passes of 20-plus yards: a low total for a speedster whose quarterback until mid-December was Patrick Mahomes. A Week 1 shoulder injury sidelined Worthy for a few weeks, then hampered him for most of the season. Andy Reid revealed in April that he didn’t let Worthy run certain routes because of the injury. Worthy had offseason surgery and wore a yellow no-contact jersey when he participated in OTAs. 

Worthy qualifies as a Crossroads Receiver: big name, top pick, lots left to prove. His job is safe. His target share and tenuous status as one of the league’s most dangerous playmakers is not.

By the way, have you heard about Cyrus Allen?

“Each day, [Cyrus] Allen's snaps with quarterback Patrick Mahomes and the rest of the first-team offense have increased – and so have his highlights,” ESPN’s Nate Taylor reported on Saturday.

“Friday's two-hour practice was quite the crescendo, too. The loudest roars – and the sudden ‘Whoa!’ – from fans were not in reaction to tight end Travis Kelce, running back Kenneth Walker III or any defensive player. Allen dominated the on-field work, leading all receivers with five catches during the projected starters' 11-on-11 repetitions.”

Every Chiefs reporter on my social media feed gushed about Allen last week. When Allen suffered a practice-field injury on Saturday, the aggregators and fantasy speculators held a candlelight vigil. Allen’s injury appears to only be a shin bruise.

Worthy left the same practice with a shoulder injury, but it was Allen getting carted off that caused my phone to explode. 

Allen was a fifth-round pick out of Cincinnati, by way of Texas A&M, by way of Louisiana Tech. He didn’t do much in his early college career but clicked with Brendan Sorsby last year, going 51-674-13. He was shifty at Cincinnati, getting open with subtle head-fakes and double moves on sideline routes. 

Allen is just 5-foot-11 and not that fast. He turned 23 in February, making him a few months older than Worthy. I did a little draft work on Allen but left him off the Too Deep 96 because he just looked like a man-among-boys at a middleweight program with a talented quarterback enjoying a peak season. I’m monitoring the training camp “Whoa"s but not changing my assessment just yet.

Worthy has actually been stumping for Allen since minicamp. “Cyrus, he’s an electric route runner,” Worthy said in June, per Ron Kopp Jr. at Arrowhead Pride. “I mean, obviously you guys could see it, he has an explosion, obviously good ball skills, and he’s a smart player.”

Worthy reiterated his praise after Allen’s big practice performance on Friday. “I told y'all earlier this offseason."

It’s a positive sign when a Crossroads Receiver is being asked about other players, rather than himself: you know you’ve made it when the beat reporters think of you as a source, not a story. It’s a negative sign when a receiver who was slowed by a shoulder injury last year suffers another one on August 1st.

Worthy could break out as one of the NFL’s premier playmakers, or he could end up running fly routes for 30 snaps per game to create space for others, including Allen. To achieve his potential, Worthy must figure out how to stay on the field. 

Before we go on to the final segment, let’s pause to acknowledge that Mahomes is a more-or-less full participant in training camp after tearing his ACL in mid-December, and everyone in Kansas City is acting like that’s totally normal. It’s like waking up one morning and finding Bobby Ewing in your shower. Was last season just a dream? Does Mahomes have three ACLs in each knee? Did the Chiefs just cannibalize Justin Fields for spare parts? We’ll investigate the Mahomes Healing Factor at a later date.

Pop Goes the Boutte

Let’s wrap things up with two examples of a different type of Crossroads Receiver: Kayshon Boutte and DeMario “Pop” Douglas of the Patriots. 

Boutte and Douglas were not high draft picks like Coleman and the others. The Patriots selected both of them in the sixth round of the 2023 draft. Douglas became an immediate contributor during the Patriots’ lost years, while Boutte worked his way up the depth chart more slowly. Boutte passed Douglas on the depth chart last year, though both receivers ended up with exactly 46 regular season targets.

Boutte is more of a vertical boundary receiver; Douglas is the small-and-slotty type. Neither was particularly consistent in 2025, but each had his moments when Drake Maye was throwing the ball and some Titans/Giants/Dolphins cornerback was covering him.

Boutte and Douglas are overachievers, not disappointments like Coleman and the others. But both are on the roster bubble, which makes them early-camp news. 

As you very well know, the Patriots traded for A.J. Brown and signed Romeo Doubs this offseason. Mack Hollins is still around to be the team’s big/fast/max-effort guy who has commanded special teams units in the past; neither Boutte nor Douglas contributes to special teams. Boutte and Douglas are competing for a WR4/5 role with speedy Kyle Williams and others. The loser of their competition is more likely to be traded somewhere than cut or kept languishing on the bench. 

Boutte “has been the subject of trade rumors throughout the spring,” reported Bernd Buchmasser of Pats Pulpit last week. “And yet, with the first four days of training camp in the books, he remains in Foxborough — and not just that: seemingly unfazed by the speculation about his future, no other member of Drake Maye’s supporting cast has had a more notable impact on the practice fields so far.” 

Buchmasser’s article is full of gushing praise from Mike Vrabel and others. Vrabel might like Boutte enough to forward a copy of the article straight to John Spytek, the guy who runs the Raiders while Tom Brady pursues his lifelong dream of being a wrestling heel.

“I think my main focus was just that I’m here ’til I ain’t,” Boutte told reporters on Thursday. “My feet are here today. If I’m somewhere else next week, the week after, that’s kind of what it is.” Sounds like a man who has contacted realtors in Nevada and Northern Virginia. 

There was a minor plot twist, or perhaps a red herring, to the Boutte/Douglas story. Brown, per Andrew Callahan of the Boston Herald, experienced “struggles” which were “noteworthy” on downfield passes at the very start of training camp. There’s also some scuttlebutt about the health of Brown’s knee, which sounds more like post-blockbuster anxiety than a real issue.

Callahan posted video of a Maye-to-Brown touchdown during Thursday’s practice and wrote of a Brown “bounce back” later in the week, so the tempest has already simmered down in this particular teapot. Training camp news is a lot like New England weather: if you don’t like it, wait an hour. Readers are free to imagine how many revisions the Worthy/Allen segment went through since it was sketched out on Friday morning. 

(I still cannot wrap my brain around the fact that Patriots beat reporters are now allowed to post practice videos on social media. Bill Belichick would have confiscated their phones, press badges and kidneys.)

 It’s fun – here in greater Philly – anyway, to imagine Brown tuning Maye out after one or two overthrows and then digging into Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey on the sideline. (You just know that Brown is a Nolan Bro.) But Brown will almost certainly be with the program and ready to rack up highlights come September.

Boutte and Douglas remain worthy fantasy sleepers, because one of them will be Fernando Mendoza’s go-to wide receiver by November.

And So It Goes

Training camp is now in full swing for all 32 teams: pads, hitting, a little tackling, real depth-chart jockeying. Soon, quarterback competitions, joint practices, preseason observations and other developments, including more injuries, will dominate the summer NFL headlines. 

Crossroads Receivers never really go away, however. Boutte and Douglas will remain a source of trade speculation until one of them is traded. Pearsall’s absence will continue to haunt the 49ers, as if they aren’t already dealing with a poltergeist. Legette and Worthy will keep vying for bigger roles for teams that still have big plans for them.

And Coleman? He’ll break out, or get traded, or return punts, and Beane will either take credit or deflect blame like he’s Unus the Untouchable, and the Bills will remain the Bills because Josh Allen is Josh Allen. Whatever happens, Too Deep Zone will be here to keep you abreast of every development. Until we get bored with the bit. Which is already happening.

Oh, and while Too Deep Zone will keep freebasing Keon Coleman takes until the buzz wears off, don’t expect us to experiment with any of that Matthew Golden copium. I want to have fun, not die.

COMING LATER THIS WEEK: More Camp Notes for Junkie Sickos!