The NFL's 11 best slot receivers. Cooper Kupp 'Best Slot Receiver in the NFL' 2019 Highlights - Duration: 6:25. Clash Of The Horns Official Ytube Channel 2,202 views.

The receivers on this list are viewed as primarily slot receivers and therefore excluded from yesterday’s outside wide receiver list. 10) Devin Duvernay, Baltimore Ravens Duvernay is the only rookie on the list because although there was massive wide receiver talent in this year’s draft, we have not yet seen any of them do it in the NFL. In today’s NFL, the slot receiver is the receiver on the depth chart who you believe can benefit your team the most by setting them up to naturally have the most space to work with. It has opened the doors for many different types of wide receivers to have success, and has allowed for offensive coordinators to be more creative than ever. A Clairton native who played at Pitt, Boyd has become one of the NFL’s top slot receivers. Email Newsletters TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want.

Bleacher Report power ranked the NFL’s pass catchers for each team and while the Buffalo Bills have a much-improved group from a year ago, their unit slots in at No. 11 overall.

Stefon Diggs joins the Bills and will jump right to the top of this unit. A proven 1,000-yard receiver himself in recent seasons, he pushes fellow 2019 1,000-yard receiver, John Brown, to a No. 2 role while Cole Beasley still sits in the slot among the league’s best there.

But here’s B/R’s breakdown of why the Bills land outside the top-10:

At No. 11, the Buffalo Bills received a huge boost from Stefon Diggs’ arrival, propelling them over the Cincinnati Bengals. Diggs is on the rise while AJ Green trends in the wrong direction because of his recent injuries.

Furthermore, Cole Beasley deserves consideration as one of the top slot receivers in the league, registering 386 receptions for 4,049 yards and 29 touchdowns through eight seasons as a tertiary pass-catching option for most of his career.

With Diggs in the fold, John Brown, who registered career highs in receptions (72) and yards (1,060) during the previous term, projects as a solid No. 2 option.

Greatest Slot Receivers Of All Time

Tight end Dawson Knox had a decent rookie campaign, snagging 28 grabs for 388 yards and two scores. The unit also has some depth with Tyler Kroft if he’s fully recovered from a broken foot and low ankle sprain that limited his workload to 244 offensive snaps in 2019.

B/R goes on to say the Bills, compared to the Bengals, have less question marks in this area. But what likely keeps the Bills out of the top-10 are their very unproven tight ends. Kroft, as mentioned, has been oft-injured in his career and that’s how his first season with the Bills was a year ago. In Knox, he had a promising rookie season, but he has plenty to improve upon, including problems with drops.

However, there’s some big silver lining here. First, the Bills are the best-ranked pass catchers in the AFC East by B/R. Buffalo edges out the everyone in the division by… a lot. The Dolphins are the next closest… all the way at No. 29. But somehow they’re still ahead of the Patriots (30) and Jets (31). Those three are actually the three-worst ranks receiver rooms in the entire AFC, as the NFC’s Redskins fall in dead-last.

With that same concept in mind on the flip side, the Bills are in 11, but at the fourth-best among AFC teams. Ahead of the Bills are the Chiefs (2), Browns (3) and Chargers (9).

Still, even with these AFC positives, other outlets had the Bills in better standing within the entire league overall. Pro Football Focus among them, who recently ranked the Bills’ receivers the fifth-best in the NFL.

In the 2019 NFL season, per Sports Info Solutions, there were 19,933 total quarterback dropbacks. Against those dropbacks, NFL defenses put four defensive backs on the field just 18% of the time (3,579 snaps), while nickel defense (with five defensive backs) ruled the league by far with 59% of all snaps (11,780). And if you want to know how much the NFL isn’t a base defense league anymore, consider this: Defenses lined up in dime coverage (six defensive backs on the field) on 20.9% of total dropbacks (4,091), which means that teams played more dime defense than base defense. The Seahawks were the only team to play base defense more than 50% of the time (67%), and the Cardinals finished second at 37%.

All this is to say that unless you’re the Seahawks, you’d better have some top-level slot defenders if you want to put a credible pass defense out there in a league where offenses are implementing more kinds of receiver sets and route combinations than ever before.

And it’s not as if the skill sets required to be a slot defender are the same as those for an outside cornerback. You might be up against a 6-foot-5, 250-pound tight end on first down who can body you right out of the paint, and on the next play, you may have to deal with a small, speedy option-route receiver whose job is to juke you right out of your shoes. And as Richard Sherman once told me in his Seattle days, the thing about playing outside cornerback is that the boundary is your friend. That’s not the case when you’re in the slot, where you’re defending in space pretty much all the time.

So, which slot defenders were the most effective and valuable to their teams in 2019, and thus should be set up to do the same in 2020? With help from Pro Football Focus’ metrics, and a whole lot of tape study, here’s one list. To avoid small sample-size results, each of these defenders played at least 50% of their snaps in the slot.

Greatest Slot Receivers Nfl Rushing

Mike Hilton Chris Harris Jr. Jourdan Lewis Tramon Williams Mackensie Alexander Nickell Robey-Coleman Marlon Humphrey D.J. Hayden Brian Poole K’Waun Williams Tyrann Mathieu