Jump to content

!!! Bengals add WR Stanley Morgan Jr !!! FA


Recommended Posts

6'0 

202 lbs

4.53 (40)
38.5 inch vert

 

Morgan excelled in football as a youth, a two-time All-State pick from New Orleans and top-30 receiver prospect nationally. He got on the field right away, starting three of 13 games played as a freshman and catching 25 passes for 304 yards (12.2 average) and three scores. He also returned kickoffs (14-324-23.1). Morgan started nine of 13 games in 2016 (33-453-13.7, two TDs) and then had a breakout junior season. He was a second-team All-Big Ten pick in 2017, setting the school record with 986 receiving yards and scoring 10 times on 61 receptions (16.2 average). The school record had stood since Heisman winner Johnny Rodgers had 942 yards in 1972. Morgan broke his own record with 1,004 receiving yards on 70 receptions (14.3 average) with seven scores in 2018, starting all 12 games to again earn second-team all-conference honors. Stanley Morgan is no relation to the former NFL receiver of the same name, and his father has actually been in prison since 2007.
 
Draft Projection
Round 5
Overview
While some scouts see Morgan as "just a guy" with average size and athleticism who fails to stand out as a prospect, others may appreciate his professional approach to the position and competitive demeanor. He's best judged by the sum of his parts, which takes into account his toughness and durability, as well. He doesn't open wide catch windows, but his ball skills and ability to haul in contested catches tend to make up for it. He could start off as a WR4/5 but has the chance to find playing time as he works his way up.
Strengths
  • Operates with consistently good play speed and urgency
  • Leverages open catch windows from the top of his route
  • No hesitation attacking over the middle
  • Excellent catch focus inside congested areas
  • Above-average ball skills and body control
  • Climbs ladder to pluck it at the high-point
  • Impressive ability to rescue low throws
  • Alters speed for downfield ball adjustments
  • Quick after catch with wiggle to elude early tackle attempts
  • Willing to put in work as perimeter blocker.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Kochman said:

I knew you would love it👍

Image result for stanley morgan Jr
 
I was wanting him drafted all day. I would have been ok with using a 4th rder on him ... so to get him as a FA I consider a huge steal. 

As a Husker fan I have watched him make big plays for years despite having no QB play. 
Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, Jupiter Fan said:

Wrong Stanley Wilson guys, but I'm surprised this guy wasn't drafted. He makes the #2 pick easier to swallow if he makes the team.

Wasn’t Stanley Wilson the running back that missed the super bowl because he was up all night doing blow and hookers or something?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, FulcherVulcher33 said:

Im totaly on board,his dad was a stud

 

1 hour ago, ArmyBengal said:

I remember watching his dad on channel 38 out of Boston. 

 

36 minutes ago, Jupiter Fan said:

Wrong Stanley Wilson guys, but I'm surprised this guy wasn't drafted. He makes the #2 pick easier to swallow if he makes the team.

His dad didn't play in the league and his last name is Morgan.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

 

 

 

 

 

Morgan Follows Chad On His Way To NFL Shot 

 

Hobson_Geoff

Geoff Hobson

SENIOR WRITER

 
 

WR Stanley Brown

Stanley Morgan ran on Chad Johnson's old stomping ground this weekend.

Now we are hitting the Chad Generation of wide receivers.

Stanley Morgan, who already followed Chad Johnson a few years before Twitter and The Ocho, also knew he wanted to play in the NFL before he went to the game that day when he was ten years old and his youth football camp got on the field before Johnson’s Bengals played his Saints. But after standing in front of Johnson during the national anthem under the dome in New Orleans, he really knew he wanted to make it.

Even before Johnson’s 190 yards bested Drew Brees’ 510 in that indoor air show on Nov. 19, 2006.

“That pushed me,” Morgan said Saturday morning as rookie minicamp suddenly broke up in Johnson’s old locker room. “It was just amazing to be in that stadium so big being so small. “I probably just said, ‘Hey,’ or something. I just looked at him for a long time. I was like, ‘Wow, this is crazy.’ I was star struck.”

Because Chad is still Chad, he reached out to Morgan again when he slid through the draft two weeks ago and ended up signing with his old team as a free agent.

“He talks to me on Twitter all the time,” Morgan said. “He told me it’s not about getting drafted. It’s about how you come in and perform. He told me it’s about taking advantage of your opportunity.”

And there is opportunity on this depth chart. After their two 1,000-yard receivers in A.J. Green and Tyler Boyd, the speed of John Ross and the return ability of reliable slot man Alex Erickson, they’re looking for consistency and production. Since they didn’t draft a wide receiver for the first time in 12 years, they must believe Nebraska’s Morgan and Troy’s Damion Willis are good enough to contend for those last few spots.

At 6-3, 204 pounds and seven catches of at least 40 yards with an average grab of 18 yards, Willis is believed to be the free agent with the highest rank on the Bengals’ draft board. And after becoming Nebraska’s first 1,000-yard receiver, the 6-0, 202-pound Morgan had been rated a fourth- or fifth-rounder, according to Ourlads Scouting Services.

Bengals wide receivers coach Bob Bicknell can’t tell you why they were waiting for his call after the draft. But he’ll gladly take them. Morgan is symbolic of the divide between draftnicks and draft rooms. His 4.53 seconds in the 40-yard dash, vertical jump of 38.5 inches and broad jump of 10 feet, five inches were in the top 10 of all receivers at NFL scouting combine, according to a published report that also notes he had the second-fastest time in cone drills and fourth fastest in the 20-yard shuttle.

So much for the gurus and big boards and daily mocks. After 28 wide receivers got drafted, Morgan was on the horn with Bicknell.

“Who knows?” Bicknell asked Saturday as he came off the field. “It’s just the reality of the way the league is. Certain guys fall through and all of a sudden you just want to get them as a free agent. … I liked Stanley coming out … He’s a physical, productive kid … I think we had a draftable grade on him. I think everybody in the league had a draftable grade on him. For whatever reason he didn’t get drafted and we were lucky to get him. He was an important one for us to get.

 

dmxpt8jrp8jndptvkxbu.jpg

Jay LaPrete/AP Photos
Not even Johnny Rodgers or Irving Fryar caught a grand for the Huskers.

“A lot of my really good friends are on that (Nebraska) staff and they speak very highly of him as a worker and that’s how he came into these three days. He attacked it.”

Morgan isn’t exactly devastated. He’s lived pure devastation. As Hurricane Katrina bore down on his hometown barely a week before his ninth birthday, his grandmother and mother convinced his grandfather to leave their home in the Seventh Ward with hours to spare.

They fled to Baton Rouge and even though the 80-mile drive took them 16 hours and by the time they got there the power was gone at the tail end of the storm, they knew they had escaped with their lives. When they returned, everything was gone and that’s why there are precious few photos and videos of Monique Jason’s only child.

“I never want to go through anything like that again,” Morgan said. “To be split up from different parts of your family … Having my inner family was a blessing, but I never want to go through that again. We lost everything except for a few things we could take. We had to get new clothes. Everything.”

But they came back to re-build the home and his grandparents are still there. His mother now lives elsewhere in New Orleans. That trip to the dome to see Chad helped him get through all that. Even at a young age Morgan wasn’t so much wrapped up in Johnson’s histrionics, but his play.

“His attitude towards the game. His readiness,” Morgan said. “Just his consistency, his balance, his releases.”

Following Johnson made him a fan of the Bengals of his youth from afar because he still liked the Saints. But the Bengals lured him.

“I had respect for the Bengals,” Morgan said. “The uniform, the culture.”

 

Before he made the trip to minicamp he and his mother talked about how funny it was that he ended up in that uniform. Plus there is his Twitter relationship with his new team’s all-time leading receiver. Not only that, his new head coach still holds the Nebraska season record for touchdown passes.

“The first thing we said to each other was just ‘“Go Big Red,’” Morgan said of the Zac Taylor intro.

 

owkadxqibm6yhud2mrtr.jpg

The kids that followed No. 85 are now catching NFL passes.

Taylor never threw to a 1,000-yard receiver. Not even Johnny Rodgers or Irving Fryar caught 1,000 yards in a Cornhuskers season before Morgan caught a 12-yard curl in last season’s finale against Iowa on his way to 1,004.

 

“It was towards the end of the game, but it really wasn’t at the end of the game,” said Morgan, who sensed his coaches and mates were trying to aid history and help him get it. “I just kind of knew because they were calling plays for me.”

Which tells you how highly they regard him in Lincoln. Fittingly, he reached 1,000 on a curl. He says the curl and slant are his favorites and that’s how he views himself. A solid catch that can move the chains consistently. And if the height and 40 time conspired to doom him on Draft Saturday, Bicknell doesn’t buy it.

“We have a really big group in here right now. Six-foot is pretty good size in the NFL,” Bicknell said. Everyone is looking 6-2, 6-3, which is obvious. And every once in a while you get A.J. Green (6-4) who’s got all of it. But (Morgan is) plenty big enough. He’s not a small receiver. He runs well.”

But after more than a decade of following the most prolific Bengals receiver of them all, Morgan has a good idea of how he’ll get one of those striped helmets of his own.

“Catch everything,” Morgan said. “Be consistent. Be that guy that’s reliable.”

 

Tweet it, Ocho.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Stanley seems to have some good habits-- willing blocker and hand catcher chief among them but I really like the things you can't teach.   Natural ability to high point the ball, a Dillonesque stiff-arm,  natural ability to set up and use blockers down field, fearless over the middle, difficult to take down after contact , elusive without being quick.   

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...