He is tiny, yet powerful. Sudden, yet subtle. Exciting, yet not really flashy. Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Cole Beasley has progressed each season he’s been in the league, to the point where he’s not only a consistent and vital part of the team’s offense, but one of the top pass catchers in the entire NFL. According to Pro Football Focus, Beasley was the most reliable slot receiver in the league last season.

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For his entire NFL career he posted 52 touchdown receptions. Dale’s career 19.7 yards per reception is the highest, by a wide margin, in Packers’ history for any receiver (minimum 100 receptions). Had Dale spent his entire career in Green Bay, he likely would have been one of the best ever. Receivers 10-6 can be found on the next page. As PFF notes, his slot catch rate was the highest among slot receivers in the NFL last season. The 78.9% he posted last season improved on his already impressive career catch-percentage of 72%. Slot receivers and tight ends fill two different roles. Slot receivers are usually more diminutive possession guys who specialize in having sure hands, running precise short routes, and having great lateral quickness/elusiveness etc. While TEs are normally big-bodied guys who can double as blockers. Welker, Brown, and Edelman were all primarily slot receivers. Morgan definitely was not – he averaged 19.4 yards per catch in his Patriots career, including single seasons in which he averaged.

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For slot receivers, it was 11.63. So, over time and based on the play design and the makeup of the receivers, teams could find just that many more yards by throwing to their slot targets. The best slot receivers in the game bring unique and highly valuable traits to the game, and here are the best among them.

The modernization of the passing game and NFL offenses has created a greater need and importance on excellent slot receivers. Wide receivers like Julian Edelman, Jarvis Landry, Randall Cobb, and Larry Fitzgerald immediately come to mind as players who are capable of doing serious damage out of the slot, and Beasley is certainly an ascending member of that group. The 5-foot-8 Texas native quickly turned out to be one of Dak Prescott’s favorite targets last season, and Beasly turned in career highs in targets (98), receptions (75), receiving yards (833), and tied his career high in touchdown receptions (five). As PFF notes, his slot catch rate was the highest among slot receivers in the NFL last season. The 78.9% he posted last season improved on his already impressive career catch-percentage of 72%.

In fact, Beasley stacks up to not just the elite slot receivers, but also the best wideouts in entire league.

By Football Outsiders’ DYAR metric (Defense-adjusted Yards Above Replacement), which assigns value to a wide receiver’s performance compared to replacement-level production, Beasley was the fifth most valuable receiver last season, ahead of players like Antonio Brown, A.J. Green, and DeSean Jackson. Similarly, he was also the fifth-ranked wideout in DVOA, which grades the receiver on a per-play basis and measures players on how much better they are than the league average at their position.

It might seem peculiar a diminutive slot receiver led this Dallas team in receiving yards last season, but make no mistake Cole Beasley figures to be a fixture of the Cowboys’ offense for the near future. With the addition of WR Ryan Switzer, who profiles as an extremely similar receiver to Beasley, Dallas could be armed with a truly lethal set slot players prepared to slice through defenses next season.

A few years back, when I asked Doug Baldwin — one of the pre-eminent slot receivers of the last decade — about the importance of the position, he summed it up pretty well.

“The slot receiver’s kind of the quarterback of the receivers,” he said in 2015. “More so because the slot receiver has more responsibilities in terms of reading coverages and different adjustments based on what coverages you’re seeing. It’s a lot more complicated. … You have to know a lot more. You have to stay within the confines and the framework of the offense — you have a lot of freedom because you have a little bit more space, but at the same time, your job is usually to get someone else open, or to get open on a crucial down where it’s one-on-one. You have to be versatile, and you have to understand how your route goes into the concept, based on the different coverages you can see.”

10. Adam Humphries 9. Golden Tate 8. Dante Pettis 7. Cooper Kupp 6. Jarvis Landry 5. Julian Edelman 4. Adam Thielen 3. JuJu Smith-Schuster 2. Antonio Brown 1. Tyreek Hill

It was an apt description in 2015, and though Baldwin has retired, the role of the slot receiver is quite similar to what it was then — and in 2019, one could argue that it’s even more important now. Three- and four-receiver sets are now the norm in the NFL, which means that teams will have double slot packages in which big and small receivers work together. And there’s no shame to the position — it’s not just for the Wes Welkers of the world anymore. Guys who can win outside just fine find themselves in the slot quite frequently, and you’ll find a few names that will rank highly on our upcoming list of outside receivers on this list as well.

Other Top 11 lists: Tight ends Centers Guards Offensive tackles Edge defenders Interior defensive linemen Linebackers Safeties Outside cornerbacks Slot defenders

So, here are the 11 best slot receivers in the NFL as we head into the 2019 season.

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When watching Jacksonville’s 2018 passing offense, two things are abundantly clear — Jaguars receivers had one heck of a time with consistent production with Blake Bortles and Cody Kessler throwing the ball all over the place, and the acquisition of Nick Foles was a necessity to give those receivers any chance of improvement. Among those receivers, Westbrook may have the most potential, as he brought in 59 slot receptions on 83 targets for 646 yards and five touchdowns. Not bad for a second-year receiver who’s never had a lot of help from his quarterbacks at the NFL level.

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Westbrook uses nimble feet and an impressive catch radius to make contested catches, and he has a good knack for getting open in zones. His drop rate was a problem at times, but with a credible quarterback at the helm, Westbrook could be a rising star in a big hurry.