D.J. Moore was taken in the 2018 NFL Draft by the Carolina Panthers with the 24th overall pick. At Maryland, Moore was a big play machine, posting 1033 yards and 8 TD on 80 catches in his final season with the team. He came into the draft with insane combine measurables:

40 Yard Dash Vertical Jump Broad Jump 20 Yard Shuttle 60 Yard Shuttle Measure 4.42 sec 39.5” 132” 4.07 sec 11.18 sec Percentile 83rd 90th 96th 85th 81st

With a deadly combination of straight line speed, acceleration, and jumping abilities, Moore was one of the most sought after WR prospects in the draft. He was the first receiver off the board at 24th overall.

Moore was brought in to improve an extremely shaky Carolina WR corps, which has struggled to find an identity since Steve Smith Sr. left the team in 2014. After his departure, the Panthers selected Devin Funchess in the 2nd round of the 2015 draft to try to fill the void at the position. While Funchess remains the #1 WR in Carolina, he has struggled to provide consistent production to the team. In 2016, Carolina again spent a 2nd round pick, this time on Ohio State WR Curtis Samuel, who has failed to make a significant impact on the team so far.

As D.J. Moore has become more and more involved in the Panthers offensive attack, he has shown tremendous playmaking ability and has given QB Cam Newton a reliable deep threat. Through his first 11 games, Moore has started 4 and posted very respectable numbers:

GS REC YD TD Y/R 4 30 474 2 15.8

These statistics may not jump off the page, but a deeper dive into Moore’s production shows just how successful he’s been so far this season:

Catch Rate RACR YAC +/- Stat 76.92% 1.21 4.6 NFL Rank 4th 6th 2nd

RACR: “RACR stands for Receiver Air Conversion Ratio. RACR is an efficiency metric that rolls up catch rate and yards after the catch into one number. It can also be thought of as the number of receiving yards a player creates for every air yard thrown at him.”

YAC +/-: “A receiver’s YAC compared to their Expected YAC”

For averaging almost 16 yards per catch, being 8th in the entire league in catch rate is an astonishing feat. The RACR and YAC +/- numbers show that D.J. Moore is already one of the best receivers in the league at working in space and piling up yards after the catch.

Moore’s elite speed and acceleration make him a huge weapon and a welcome addition to a Panthers offense that has struggled fielding competitive WRs in the past. With towering red zone targets in Devin Funchess and Greg Olsen, a versatile playmaker in Christian McCaffery, and a dual threat QB in Cam Newton, Moore adds another wrinkle to the Carolina offense that might just put them over the top in the near future.