Marquise 

Brown

Brown was a first-round pick for the Baltimore Ravens in 2019 and was expected to be a great deep threat. However, Lamar Jackson's deep ball accuracy was a major limitation. From 2019 to 2021, Jackson's deep ball accuracy was 32.9%, ranking seventh-worst among quarterbacks with at least 100 deep attempts. During those three seasons, Brown caught 20 deep passes out of 70 targets, with only 26 being catchable. His average target depth was balanced by many passes thrown behind the line of scrimmage.

Brown was then traded to the Cardinals before the 2022 season. Over the last two years, just 30% of Kyler Murray's deep passes were charted as accurate, the fifth-worst among quarterbacks with at least 50 deep targets. Combining that with the backup quarterbacks who played while Murray was injured, the team had a combined deep accuracy percentage of 29.6%, the fourth-lowest in the league. Additionally, 61.1% of their deep passes were completely uncatchable, the worst rate in the NFL.

The big reason for optimism is Patrick Mahomes. As we detailed above, Brown could be one of the best deep threats in the league, but he just hasn’t had the quarterbacks to help him there. Mahomes’ deep ball accuracy over the past five seasons is 41%, 11th-best among the 40 quarterbacks with at least 100 deep attempts. This should be a big step up for Brown. Although Mahomes hasn’t produced a high deep target rate recently, his deep options in the last two seasons have been Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Justin Watson. Coach Reid has noted that Mahomes is utilizing his deep threats more in practice because he now has receivers who can perform well in that role.