The Cleveland Browns Have a Budding Superstar at WR

The Cleveland Browns Have a Budding Superstar at WR

Denzel Boston is the rookie WR I keep coming back to, and I think people are sleeping on him. Cleveland took him 39th overall out of Washington, he’s 22, and he’s built like a matchup nightmare at 6-foot-4, 215 pounds. He caught 62 balls for 881 yards and 11 touchdowns as a junior year in college.

It’s already showing up on the NFL field too. Through two weeks in his rookie year he’s got 7 catches for 150 yards and 2 touchdowns. Word out of Cleveland’s spring sessions was that he might’ve been the most impressive offensive player on the roster. He’s lining up outside, Jerry Jeudy’s still the nominal WR1, but Boston’s got the size and ball skills to force his way into targets regardless of what the depth chart says.

KC Concepcion being a stud doesn’t scare me off Boston at all honestly, that offense in the future can feed both of them. Concepcion’s the shifty, moves-all-over-the-formation guy, Boston’s the big-bodied X receiver who wins on the outside and in the red zone. Those two roles overlap way less than people think, so there’s plenty of target pie to go around.

My actual take is that Boston doesn’t stay a name people mention as an afterthought behind Concepcion for long. His catch radius and contested-catch ability are exactly the kind of traits that translate fast in the NFL, and Cleveland clearly wants to feed its young receivers. I’m not surprised dynasty guys are already paying a future second-round pick to get him, his price dropped for no real reason other than name recognition, and that’s a gift. A 22-year-old with two years of real college production, prototype size, and a role that’s already growing is exactly the profile that breaks out in year one, not year three.