IR Dalton Rigdon
Dalton Rigdon shouldn’t be a player we have forgotten about. After all, he missed just two games last year, the final two games of the year. However, he simply isn’t being discussed much as a player we should be excited about in 2020 as should be the case.
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The 5-foot-11, 170-pound junior from Perryton is a big-play threat who averaged 14.3 yards per catch last year. He was most effective when attacking opposing safeties by simply running past them from the slot.
It’s tough for a safety to adjust form coming forward or standing in place at the snap to picking up Rigdon when he’s in full stride and as the season progressed last year, Tech started to exploit that mismatch. In his final three games of the year, Rigdon averaged 84.6 yards and 4.6 receptions per game (18.3 yards per catch), which scoring a TD in all three.
If you extrapolate those numbers out over a 12-game season, it would make Rigdon a 1,015-yard receiver. But of course, sports don’t work that way and we can’t just assume that Rigdon will blow up in that fashion this fall.
It will be fascinating to see what the battle a slot receiver looks like this year. Rigdon, White, Mannix, and KeSean Carter should stage one heck of a battle for snaps there and they could all see significant playing time this year. However, one of them needs to rise to the top and claim the job.
We should stop overlooking the former walk-on Rigdon. He’s now proven enough to be considered an important component of the offense in 2020 and he’d likely be the favorite to win the job if Vegas were to release odds.
Yet he remains a player that is far from the collective consciousness for some reason. But if he makes the type of impact this year that he made in the final three games of his 2019 season, he will quickly become a player Red Raider fans think we can’t live without.