Treylon Burks, Profile: Why the Tennessee Titans drafted the Wide receiver in the NFL Draft
With the 18th pick in the 1st round of the NFL Draft, the Tennessee Titans selected wide receiver Treylon Burks. Here's what we know about the player.
Treylon Burks' bio:
Right around the top-100 overall recruits in 2019, Burks just cracked the 500-yard mark in ten games as a true freshman. He went for nearly 900 yards and seven scores in his second season in only nine games before setting career-highs last season with just over 1200 yards and 12 touchdowns from 80 touches. That made him a first-team All-SEC selection after making second-team the two years prior.
Treylon Burks' Strengths
Burks was heavily deployed in the slot and moved across the formation quite a bit, with jet, orbit and return motions, catching a variety of screens and other designed touches. His usage and style of play was somewhat reminiscent of now-Jaguars receiver Laviska Shenault at Colorado. He was used a lot to bind defenders with screen fakes and taking eyes with him when racing across the formation.
Not only was Burks more involved in the offense and his numbers increased last season, but his ascent throughout the national landscape had a lot to do with the meaning on those numbers, as Arkansas won their first four games of the season and being a tough nut for pretty much every team on their schedule.
The Razorback offensive weapon shows good explosion off the snap and moves incredibly smoothly for his size. He can stop and start with little effort, even running some stutter-fades or hitch-and-go routes, but can also easily bend off the inside foot on out routes.
Arkansas had him running a bunch of slants, crossers and benders, where he could rip the ball out of the air and run with it. Burks does a great job of leaning into his man and using subtle push-offs on curl or comeback routes. He really excels at hand-fighting and stacking DBs on vertical routes, befory gaining a couple of steps on them.
At the same time, he understands when to pace himself and get his head around as an alert/hot-route or just when the defense voids an area. This past season, he averaged 3.57 yards per route run, despite how much he was used around the line of scrimmage.
Those big palms of Burks really swallow that ball. He easily adjusts to it mid-flight and uses his large frame well to box out, at times literally throwing guys off himself, as well as draw some flags for pass interference.
You see a bunch of high-point grabs on underthrown balls along the sideline (on purpose), where he displays amazing concentration, most notably back-to-back catches that looked almost identical in their shootout at Ole Miss last season. He has the frame to absorb hits from the safety barreling over to him.
Burks presents an attractive target on in-breaking routes, where defenders have to go through him to get to the ball. When the ball goes to somebody working underneath him, Burks will pivot around and try to escort him down the field.
He just has that extra gear to beat defenders, while also packing a mean stiff-arm against any pursuit. He packs an extremely strong lower half and routinely shrugs off defenders or runs through arm-tackles as if they were turnstiles. Along with the fly sweeps and bubbles I mentioned Arkansas utilizing him on, they also put him in a condensed set and almost used him like a tight-end on slide routes off run-fakes or wheeled him out of the backfield.
There are more home-run calls than you’d expect from a big-bodied receiver like Burks, indicated by his 16.7 yards per grab and an SEC-leading 20 receptions of 20+ yards. He scored an 85-yard touchdown against Texas A&M in 2021 and was a blade of grass away from making one of the greatest leaping catches I’ve seen in college football that day.
Treylon Burks' Weaknesses:
With that being said, Burks rounds off his breaks and kind of glides into routes down the field too much, rather than exploding out of those transitions. He needs to do a better job of putting safeties on their heels and then creating separation with sharper cuts.
Burks has the looks of an X receiver, but 77 percent of his career snaps were spent in the slot and he faced press coverage on only 39 snaps in 2021, with no tape of him winning cleanly against it. He doesn’t always catch the ball at full extension, away from his body, but rather allows it to hit his numbers.
He has to show more urgency coming off the ball as a blocker, attacking the chest of his defender and sustaining contact. His combine performance did not live up to the hype. It started at his measurements, where his hands were slightly below ten inches, after we were told he needed special 5XL gloves, but then his 4.55 in the 40 was way off expectations, he was bottom-ten in both the jumps and he had the second-slowest three-cone drill.
Conclusion on Treylon Burks:
The word unique gets thrown around a lot and is overused these days, but I don’t think there’s many 225-pound human beings on the planet who can run by some of the fastest guys on the edges of a defense. This, with the ability to barrel through some of the hardest-hitting 240+ pound linebackers. He is not a super-refined route runner and we haven’t seen him win in more traditional ways on the outside, but with all the different methods to get the ball in his hands and how he consistently creates yardage after the catch, he can be a unique piece to any offense.
In a fascinating first round for Tennessee, they are heavily investing in the young receiver.
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