Larry Donnell is a massive human, and usually when you’re around someone of his size and general mountain-like stature, the assumption is he won’t exactly be nimble.
At 6’6” and weighing 265 pounds he should be a lumbering lug, a behemoth who operates on the football field with force, not finesse. But he has plenty of both.
We saw that Thursday night repeatedly. Donnell caught three touchdown passes as his New York Giants removed the wheels from the Kirk Cousins bandwagon, trouncing the Redskins 45-14. All three were in the red zone, all three were on throws of six yards or less, and all three required leaping, sometimes twisting catches.
Two up the middle, and another on a fade. The sheer volume of his touchdowns so far and his scoring efficiency in the red zone is downright startling from a second-year player who had all of three catches last year. But should it be?
No, in hindsight probably not. Eli Manning is clearly aware of Donnell’s talents and has targeted him more than any other Giants pass catcher. Through four games he’s chucked a football at Donnell 37 times, which has resulted in a team leading 25 receptions. Of Manning’s nine touchdown passes so far, Donnell has been on the receiving end for four of them.
He’s emerging, and doing it really, really fast. Donnell is averaging a touchdown about once every four receptions. And he can get deep too, running up the seam and using his wide frame to collect highly-contest balls. He’s brought in catches for 18, 19, and 23 yards.
There are other abnormally athletic monster tight ends throughout the league. Jimmy Graham, for example, is 6’7” and also 265 pounds. But what could allow Donnell to post numbers in the same neighborhood as those giants is that target volume, and Manning’s fixation. He’s currently on pace for 148 targets, and using Graham as an example again, he finished 2013 with 142 looks from Drew Brees.
With that sort of usage after a quarter of the season, gargantuan numbers to match Donnell’s tree of a body aren’t unreasonable to imagine.
