The Chicago Bears finally unloaded the number overall pick and when they did, they grabbed a haul of players. They added the ninth pick, a future first, two second-rounders, and then the notable prize of D.J. Moore.
D.J. Moore is huge for the Chicago Bears because it is almost a throw in for the Panthers, but checks a giant need off of the board for the Bears. Moore will join Darnell Mooney, and Chase Claypool as the top three wide receivers next season. What do Chicago Bears fans need to know about him?
5. D.J. Moore has age and production on his side
You will hear this joke a million times, but D.J. Moore and Velus Jones are just one year apart. There is a bit of a difference in production, though. Moore is 25 years old, and will be 26 this season. He also has 5,201 career receiving yards.
This is pretty rare. In fact, there are seven pass catchers in NFL history with 5,000 yards or more before they turned 26 years old. They are Randy Moss, Mike Evans, Larry Fitzgerald, DeAndre Hopkins, DJ Moore, Brandin Cooks, and Amari Cooper.
What a list. This is a bit of selection bias because you almost have to enter the NFL at age 20 just to have a shot at being on the list. Still, that says a lot about Moore that he was able to go from Maryland to the NFL in three seasons after being a 17-year-old freshman. There is a reason that every name on the list is special.
Yes, to be fair, Evans and Moss are over 6,000, and he is much closer to Cooks and Cooper than those two. Still, if the Chicago Bears get what the Cowboys get from Cooper after they traded for him, this is going to be a huge win. That is the caliber of wide receivers they are dealing with.
Moore will need 800 yards to make the list of 6,000 yards by age 26. That list includes Moss, Fitzgerald, Evans, Hopkins, Cooper, and Julio Jones. Only Cooks is off that list and Jones joins them. Something tells me that with Justin Fields, D.J. Moore will also be on this list.
4. D.J. Moore has a strong yards per route run
Yards per route run is one of the more telling stats for efficiency. If you are in a run heavy offense, but producing a ton, you still stick out here. The Panthers have played to hide their quarterback since D.J. Moore was drafted.
For his career, he has averaged 1.94 yards per route run, nearly two yards. In his second and third NFL seasons, he was over two, at 2.03, and 2.23. As a rookie he was at 1.81, in 2021 he was at 1.86, and last season he was at 1.74. That is his lowest.
If you looked at his career number of 1.94, historically that would rank between 10th and 15th in the NFL. Some years were better than others for Moore, but for the most part he has been in right that range close to the top 10 in the NFL.
3. D.J. Moore can be a deep threat for the Chicago Bears
The notable change in D.J. Moore is how he slowly but surely became a bigger downfield threat. During his first season he was almost a gadget player and only had 11.8% of his targets go 20 yards down the field.
From there, he started to expand his game. He went up to 16.2% of his targets being deep passes in 2019, and then 22.1% of his passes being the deep ball in 2020. His deep ball rate dropped a bit in 2021 down to 14.7% but shot all the way up to 27.5% last season.
D.J. Moore was ninth in deep ball yards, seventh in targets, and fifth in targets rate. He was a deep ball threat last season. Justin Fields happens to be his perfect fit.
Justin Fields threw the ball 20 yards down field on 16% of his snaps. Sam Darnold went deep 17.9% last season, mostly to D.J. Moore. Fields was in fourth behind Darnold, Russell Wilson, and Josh Allen.
Still, Fields had more yards per attempt and more big-time throws. He is one of the best deep passers in the NFL and of the more aggressive passers. With D.J. Moore being of the best deep ball catchers, the duo could be insanley dynamic.
2. D.J. Moore can beat man and zone
D.J. Moore won in the short game during the first couple of seasons, and can become a deep threat later. He also can beat both man and zone coverage. For his carer, he averaged 2.33 yards per route run against man, and 1.83 yards per route run against zone. It looks like he is worse in zone, but with the over-the-top help it is less likely big plays break out compared to man busts.
Moore ranked between 7th and 16th when looking at his yards per route run against man coverage throughout his career. Meanwhile, he ranked between ninth and 21st when running against zone. So, again, no matter how you look at Moore, he is one of the more prolific deep ball threats in the NFL.
D.J. Moore ran 69% of his routes against zone coverage, and that is good news because with a mobile quarterback like Justin Fields, he is about to see a ton of zone. He is not as prolific, but is still in the top 20, and with Justin Fields, that number could even improve. Either way, it is hard to sayt hat one or the other would be a weakness for him. He has a lot of reasons to like him as a complete threat.
1. Chicago Bears need to bring the YAC back out of D.J. Moore
Last season D.J. Moore exploded as a deep threat but also lost an edge to his game. Moore has been one of the better yards after the catch wideouts, but last season that number completely fell off.
For his career, D.J. Moore had 427 yards after the catch as a rookie, then 392, 390, 445, and then down to 191 last season. That is a huge drop. To put it into rankings, he went from 15th to 10th, 19th, and then 13th. Last season he was down at 53rd.
As we noted, there is not much he cannot do. When they asked him to do well in this area, he has done well. You can probably place this issue on the scheme and quarterback.
Luke Getsy has been looking for a wideout to get the ball in his hands and let him do his thing. D.J. Moore is exactly that wideout. Last season Bears wideouts had 20 rushing attempts. D.J. Moore has 39 tushing attempts and had 10 rushes last season. He had 13 rushes for 172 yards as a rookie, and that is the dynamic nature the team is looking to get out of those plays.
Do not look his YAC last season and think he cannot create with the ball in his hands. That year is the outlier.
The Chicago Bears added a wideout who is good against man, good against zone, good after the catch, and good catching the deep ball. With the right offense that uses his full skill set and the right quarterback, the team found their number-one wideout.