How Dyami Brown and Sammis Reyes played against the Patriots

Taking a closer look at how Brown and Reyes performed in Washington’s preseason opener

After reviewing Washington’s offense in the team's preseason opener against the Patriots, I figured I’d empty the notebook on a couple of players that I kept an eye on. Rookie receiver Dyami Brown and tight end Sammis Reyes were two players that I focused on when watching back the game, so let's take a closer look at how they played.

Dyami Brown

Washington’s third-round pick has almost flown under the radar this offseason. It’s understandable given he’s behind a star in Terry McLaurin and a big free agent signing in Curtis Samuel at receiver. He was also the fourth pick of the rookie class, so Jamin Davis, Sam Cosmi and Benjamin St-Juste have all received more attention. But Brown has the potential to make a significant impact in his rookie season. 

I was surprised to see him play at the X receiver spot with the second unit, given that McLaurin is the starting X receiver and Brown’s path to the starting group is more likely at the Z. By playing the X, however, he had the opportunity to work on some aspects of his game that weren’t necessarily the strongest parts of his game in college.

This was Brown’s first catch of the game. He aligns isolated to the right of the formation but is in a tight split close to the offensive line. Washington then sends the running back in motion outside of Brown to try and generate a favorable matchup. However, cornerback Jalen Mills sticks with Brown inside, meaning that the Patriots are in man coverage. Brown runs a route that Washington tried to work with McLaurin a lot last year. He spots up initially, faking a short route to get the defender to stop and close on him. Brown then suddenly takes off across the middle of the field, running away from Mills. 

Brown gets a step and secures his first pass, but it wasn’t quite as easy as it might have appeared. If you watch the replay angle from behind the quarterback, you’ll notice Taylor Heinicke threw the ball slightly behind Brown, who made a solid adjustment to turn back to the ball and pull in the catch.

A few plays later, we got a glimpse of what Brown was known for in college, his deep threat.

On this play, Brown simply runs a go route down the sideline. The snap seems to be timed incorrectly, which puts Heinicke a step ahead of the play while putting Brown a step behind it, but that’s not really the point to focus on. Brown releases outside and does a nice job using a swim move with his inside arm to clear the hands of the defender and almost propel himself forward off of him. Brown quickly gets level with the defender and then a yard beyond him as he turns to locate the ball in the air. With the timing of the throw from Heinicke slightly off, the ball sails beyond the reach of Brown, but in the last few yards of the route you can see how Brown has an extra gear to go to when trying to run under the ball. That is a huge asset and I’m sure we’ll see Washington make use of it in the future.

One of the main concerns I had with Brown coming out of college was his ability to deal with physical press coverage and release into his routes on time. He was playing against the Patriots second unit, but Jalen Mills is a veteran in the league and provided an interesting first test. As we saw with that last play, Brown did a nice job using a swim move to keep himself clean. But releasing consistently takes more than that. 

To release consistently against press coverage in the NFL, receivers need to have a variety of moves and set ups to get off the line of scrimmage. This slant route shows Brown has some diversity to his releases. He sets up the route by taking a shuffle step to square up the defender before taking a hard step outside to force the defender to open up slightly. As soon as the defender shifts his weight outside as a response, Brown cuts across his face, using a club with his inside arm to shove the defender outside as he breaks. That move gets Brown cleanly into the route and he catches the slant for a conversion on third down.

The releases and route running in general were solid from Brown, even when he didn’t get the ball. 

Here, Brown isolates to the right of the formation and runs a basic dig route. Washington offensive coordinator Scott Turner might call this a six or seam six route, which tasks Brown with releasing inside, working up the seam and then breaking off sharply across the middle of the field. The problem for Brown is that he wants to release inside against a corner playing inside leverage. Brown steps up to the test though, taking a hard jab step outside to bait the corner into opening his hips to the sideline. The corner takes the bait, allowing Brown to cut back inside and slip past him. Brown offers a club and swim move with his hands but the defender doesn’t try to jam him.

After releasing inside, Brown gets to the seam and works his route back vertically. At first, this appears to give the corner a chance to catch up and recover from the clean release. However, what it actually does is changes the path of the cornerback, forcing him to work vertically too. That enables Brown to break away cleanly as he cuts inside, but unfortunately the throw was off target.

Brown could be ready to contribute earlier than anticipated. He won’t displace McLaurin at the X barring injury, but he could play in a speedy receiver package at the Z, allowing Samuel to kick inside to the slot while Adam Humphries drops to the bench. He’s certainly one to keep an eye on throughout the rest of preseason.

Sammis Reyes

Reyes is one of the most intriguing players to watch this preseason as he has the most to prove and most to gain of anyone on Washington’s roster. The Chilean’s fantastic story has been covered all offseason, having never played the sport before but shining at a workout in front of NFL personnel. He might be the best pure athlete on the team, though I’m sure Chase Young and Montez Sweat would push him close, but what matters for Reyes is how much knowledge of the game he can pick up in one offseason and can he make all that athleticism count on the field?

The preseason opener was his first chance to show what he could do on the field in a real game situation. He had some bumps, as is to be expected, but he also had some bright points too. Let’s start with those. Reyes had two catches for 25 yards, nothing to brag about for most players, but for a guy that has never played before, that’s a big deal. Let’s take a look at those catches.

Reyes’ first catch came on a slightly broken play. Reyes aligns tight to the right side of the formation and runs a quick hook route, spotting up over the ball with the option to break back outside if the coverage dictates it. Reyes gets caught a little bit in traffic as he releases off the line at the snap, but hurries into his route. As he looks to sit the route down over the middle, he spots a defender matching his route. Reyes knows he will be covered, so quickly works to break his route back outside. 

At this point, the quarterback feels pressure in the pocket and begins to scramble to his right. Reyes makes himself available to the quarterback by continuing his path towards the sideline. The quarterback leaves it a touch late to make the throw, causing Reyes to have to adjust his body to the throw. Reyes gets both hands on the ball but it pops out. However, he quickly recovers to make the catch on the second attempt all while keeping both feet inbounds to complete the catch.

The second play was a little simpler. Reyes runs a simple seam route as part of a four verticals concept. He gets jammed a little bit as he works into the route, forcing him slightly wider than he’d ideally like to be as he drifts onto the numbers. But he does come open and the quarterback finds him up the seam. Again, Reyes bobbles his first attempt at the catch but does secure the pass before the safety comes down to make the tackle.

The main concern with Reyes as a receiver is his hands. While the route running will need work, with someone of his athletic ability, Washington could work around that schematically. However, they have to trust he’ll catch the ball if they are to scheme him open. There were reports of some drops and bobbles in training camp and both of his two catches came at the second attempt. We’ll see how he does throughout the rest of preseason.

The run game is where I figured Reyes would struggle the most, because it’s not a natural thing to do. Where Reyes did well is his effort and willingness. He wasn’t a fantastic blocker, but he showed that he could generate some movement at times.

In the first play of this clip, Reyes works a combination block with the right tackle against a defensive end. The right tackle takes on the brunt of the work initially, but Reyes helps generate some movement. As the right tackle peels off the block to pick up the linebacker, Reyes continues to move the defensive end down the line far enough to allow running back Jaret Patterson to cut behind him and into the open field.

On the second play, Reyes works on his own against the Patriots edge defender. Reyes attempts to get his pad level low and under that of the defender, providing an initial pop when engaging with the defender. As the play progresses, the defender looks to fill the gap inside of Reyes and manages to do so successfully. However, Reyes again manages to generate movement, forcing the defender down the line and enabling the running back to make his cut behind him again.

These were solid blocks but there were plenty of issues with his blocking too.

Here we see three instances of Reyes struggling with his blocking. On the first play of the clip, Reyes works an initial double team with the right tackle against the defensive end, similar to the play we saw before. However, once the right tackle peels off to pick up the linebacker, Reyes gets stacked up by the defender, who takes control of the block before disengaging Reyes to work inside and make the tackle.

In the second play of the clip, Reyes looks a little unsure of who to block. He initially works on the edge defender outside of him, but only really looks to get in the way of him rather than fully engage in a block. His head turns from side to side multiple times, almost like he was looking for the defender he thought he should have been blocking. In the end, the defender works off him and he’s let standing while the defender makes the tackle.

On the third and final play of the clip, Reyes is tasked with a sift block, working from the left side of the line back across to the right as he uses that momentum to block the edge defender on the right side of the line. However, Reyes shows his hand too soon, slowing down as he approaches the defender and trying to get low to brace for impact. This not only alerts the defender that the block is coming, but gives him significant time to avoid it. That’s precisely what he does, dodging the block attempt to make the tackle while Reyes is left blocking nobody.

I still think it's a long shot that Reyes makes the final roster this season, which shouldn’t be surprising given how little experience he has. He certainly showed some competitiveness and flashed some potential here and there, but I’m not sure I saw anything that suggested he was ready to contribute to the team when the regular season begins. Certainly things can change and he has two more very important preseason games let to give himself a chance to impress, but to me he’s still a developmental prospect at this stage that would be better suited to the practice squad this season.