1. Mike Williams
One thing that I was actually shocked to learn about Tyrod Taylor after doing some research about him is that he excels in throwing deep passes. Without much more than a baseline knowledge of Taylor heading into the offseason, I would not have guessed that he was an efficient deep-ball passer.
Everyone knows that Taylor is great at protecting the football and has one of the lowest interception percentages in the league but that does not mean that he does not take shots downfield. While Philip Rivers was a gunslinger and targeted Mike Williams quite a lot, this should help Williams take an even higher step up in 2020.
Williams had over 1,000 receiving yards in 2019 but did so in under 50 receptions as he averaged the most yards per reception in the entire NFL. Williams caught only 49 of his 90 targets and if he just would have caught another 15 passes, at the same average, he would have finished with over 1,300 yards.
The targets might go slightly down as the Chargers may look to run the ball more and protect the clock, whereas Rivers was just slinging the ball, but the efficiency should go up significantly.
In 2017, which was Taylor’s last full season as a starting quarterback, he was ranked as the seventh-best deep ball thrower (16+ yards) by Football Outsiders. In that same year, Rivers was ranked 13th and was worse in 2019.
Williams had a 65.2 catch percentage in his second season and with his ability, he could easily get above 70 percent. For simplicities sake, we will say Williams gets targeted six times a game (96 on the season) and catches 70.8 percent for an average of 16.2 yards. That is 68 receptions for over 1,100 receiving yards.