Parting the Waves

The single most important ingredient of a receiver is football intelligence. The skills and abilities required to become a good receiver can be learned and developed to be a complete receiver. "Getting open" requires numerous skills such as reading coverages, running stems, getting in and out of the cut (separation techniques of the route) and bursting full speed away from the defender. While all these skills are requirements to becoming a top receiver, for the purpose of this article, we will focus on separation techniques. People often talk about receivers who can separate from defenders and how speed is what gets them open. Experience has shown me that great speed is good to have, but not always the reason a reciever gets open. Pat Tilley and Steve Largent proved that theory wrong many times. What both did have was the ability to separate from a defender very well. I played with