The key to a good magic trick is misdirection. It’s giving the viewer’s eye something to look at while the real trick goes on somewhere else. It’s the illusion you understand what is happening, that you are following along and will not be fooled.
Except then what you see is not what you expected. The rabbit is no longer in the hat; it is behind you in a box.
To look at Jahan Dotson is to look at a misdirection. He is not built to intimidate you. He is not imposing or physically daunting. Talking to reporters in street clothes, Dotson could pass as a student who just happens to be in pretty good shape.
He is quiet, introspective, thoughtful and not one to raise his voice. Off of the field he is a misdirection; he does not appear to be any of the things he actually is.
And what Jahan Dotson is turning into is what he has always set out to be: one of the best receivers, if not the best receiver, in the nation.
The thing about Dotson is his smoothness. Nothing he does looks like it’s taking all of his skills to pull off. He catches passes with such a casual ease that it feels so counter to football’s violent nature. When the ball hits Dotson’s hands, it simply lays to rest. It doesn’t smack, jostle or bobble — it simply stays put.
When he runs routes they are equally as smooth, as if you’re watching a street racer drift through corners with the perfect balance of speed and control. When Dotson hits the accelerator and opens the throttle he is a finely tuned machine, years of training roaring from the engine within – and away he goes.
If the brilliance of Saquon Barkley was the marriage of power, balance and finesse collecting into one awe-inspiring machine, the brilliance of Jahan Dotson is that he plays the game with just as much grace but without all of the noise. Barkley is a Ford F150 carving the flesh and ankles of those in front of him. Dotson is a Tesla, humming with a lethal efficiency behind a science only some can understand.
On Saturday night during Penn State’s 24-0 win at Beaver Stadium against Indiana, it was hard to mistake that brilliance for anything other than what it was — the ongoing realization of a lifetime’s worth of work. Dotson was once again effortless in his performance, pulling down eight catches for 84-yards and two touchdowns.
His first score was a leaping grab in the back of the end zone on a pass from quarterback Sean Clifford that ripped past defenders and stuck like glue to Dotson’s hands.
His second, Dotson let the engines open, grabbing a pass and taking it 30-yards through defenders nearly untouched thanks to blocking and a speed that made him float across the field.
It was that catch that opened the history books once again for Dotson. The touchdown was the 18th that he and Clifford have connected for, a new program record for a quarterback/receiver duo. Dotson also surpassed 2,000 career receiving yards Saturday night, becoming just the 10th Penn State receiver in program history to do so. He sits just a few yards beyond former Nittany Lion and State College product Jordan Norwood ON the career receiving list for seventh all-time.
Dotson now has eight games of 100 or more yards to his name, a figure that puts him just one behind the likes of Chris Godwin, DaeSean Hamilton and Joe Jurevicius. Allen Robinson sits alone with 10 such games while Bobby Engram sits steadily atop that list with 16, a mark – like so many of Engram’s records – unlikely to be touched anytime soon.
It’s fitting, too, that Dotson is so close to Hamilton in the record books. The two are similar in many ways: smooth, clam, reliable and among the best the program has ever produced. They are one in the same in so many ways, each quietly carving out their own pieces of history.
“I’m just having fun,” Dotson said on Saturday night. “That’s literally why I play this game it’s so fun to me, I love playing this game. The preparation I put him in the offseason, previous years leading up to this moment. I feel like I’ve been preparing for this moment all my life and I’m just having fun.”
The best thing about Dotson’s play is that it is hard to quantify what makes him so good. His speed is surprisingly elite but he is not particularly tall. He is strong but not overwhelming so.
It’s in this moment that what makes Dotson special is the realization that he simply is. There is no rhyme or reason to the natural abilities he possesses or why his nerves and synapses fire off in such a perfect way that allows him to be so much better than everyone else. Yes, he has worked hard, exceptionally hard, and he has failed and he has continued on that terrifying path in sports that does not guarantee that working hard will actually get you anything in return.
But Dotson is also that small piece of the unexplainable that exists in sports.
“Jahan Dotson is good,” Penn State coach James Franklin said Saturday with a laugh, not trying to explain the unexplainable.
Let’s try this again.
“He creates a lot of space,” quarterback Sean Clifford added later. “In addition to creating space, he catches everything. So those two and then he’s fast. Which is why he’s the best wide receiver in the country.”
Whatever the reasons are, Dotson is what he is. He is a kid born in a hospital so crowded that his mother gave birth to him in an examining room. He is a receiver that returned to Penn State for one more year and has seen his future in the NFL rise up to meet him as he rises up to catch each ball thrown his way.
Jahan Dotson is many things, but maybe he isn’t actually a misdirection. Maybe he’s exactly what you see.
The best receiver in America.
