5 things you need to know for Wednesday

Good morning football fans! Here are the five things you need to know coming out of Tuesday to get your morning started right:

1. PFF Analyst Bryson Vesnaver takes a look at the most productive slot receivers in the NFL, focusing purely on their production when lined up in the slot, and not their overall numbers. This changes the balance of things significantly in some cases, as a player like Julian Edelman – typically viewed as a prototype NFL slot receiver – only actually spent 53.5 percent of his snaps inside, compared to over 70 percent for some of the other players on the list.
2. J.J. Watt – the game’s most dominant player over the past several seasons – is back and working without restrictions at Houston Texans OTAs. Watt missed most of 2016 injured, and was notably banged up even when he was on the field, but in the years before that he was on another level from any defensive lineman we have seen over the past decade of NFL football, and it’s difficult to overstate how big an addition that is to the 2017 Houston defense.
3. Washington Redskins team president, Bruce Allen, said Kirk Cousins could in fact play a third straight season under the NFL’s franchise tag. That would be unprecedented in NFL history, and net Cousins something in the region of $34 million guaranteed for the 2018 season, and $78 million for three seasons of rolling contract, guaranteed play while Washington makes their mind up about whether he is worth paying big money to long-term.
4. Washington head coach Jay Gruden says that in his opinion there is nobody better as a third-down back than Chris Thompson. Obviously Thompson must have qualities that Gruden likes, but so far neither his statistical performance nor his PFF grading comes close to supporting that claim.
5. 12 teams, 20 rounds. The PFF Fantasy crew got together to have a mock draft for a dynasty startup to highlight trends, note strategy, and showcase players they were high on. From Mike Evans at 1.01 to Chris More at 20.12, Joey Cartolano recapped the draft for fantasy players to read and learn from.