Jacory Croskey-Merritt Camp Update — August 16: Eight Pounds of Muscle and the Receiving Audition Is On

Jacory Croskey-Merritt added roughly eight pounds of lean muscle this offseason, and Washington is spending training camp finding out whether it can throw him the ball. Per Zach Selby's team-site feature, dated back on August 4, the coaches are deliberately giving him more receiving snaps, and in the Tuesday practice Selby charted, he caught all three of his targets. The player's own framing tracks the project: "The more you can do, the better," and "I wanna be able to catch out of the backfield, be able to block and run." He then sat Friday's 20 to seven win over Miami with the rest of the projected starters, per the commanders.com inactives list, which is its own quiet statement about where he stands.

The June preview said the receiving question was everything, so let us restate why. His rookie year was real: 805 rushing yards, more than every rookie except three backs drafted inside the top 40, with eight touchdowns. But the points were built from the least repeatable material a back can use. Touchdowns were roughly a third of his value, touchdown rate is the least repeatable stat we track, and he caught nine passes all season, which in a half-point-per-reception world means the plays between the scores paid him almost nothing. Our arithmetic was blunt: a back who adds three catches a game to this profile changes tiers, and a back who doesn't is renting his touchdown rate. The August watch items were his preseason targets and the two-minute package.

This week's evidence is early-August evidence, dated honestly, since the feature ran August 4 and the game gave us nothing on him by design. But it is the right kind of evidence. The club is not waiting for the receiving skill to appear; it is installing it, snap by snap, and the three-for-three Tuesday is the first countable return. The room still contains Rachaad White, listed as the number-two back and signed precisely for passing downs, so the audition has a real incumbent to beat.

Does the June read hold? CONFIRMED — we said the pass-catching development was the swing factor for his entire profile, and the team is running the exact experiment, with the early charting going his way. Next week: his first live preseason targets, anything past a courtesy screen is news, and who takes the two-minute snaps when the starters play. We'll check next Sunday.

_Data via nflverse._