875: An Elite Wide Receiver Class

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zachersas JJ Zacherson, Jesus, what's up everyone, It's jj zacheryesin in this episode eight hundred and seventy five of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. Thanks for tuning in this year's wide receiver class. It's getting a lot of hype at this moment. Over on NFL mock draft database dot com, there are nineteen wide receivers slot to go in the top one hundred of the NFL Draft. Since twenty eleven, no NFL draft has seen more than sixteen wideouts go in the top one hundred. There are so many players to talk about, so many good players. I've given you my takes on plenty of them. So, like other prospect shows that I've been doing, I brought out a very special guest to talk about this wide receiver class. And that guest is none other than Matt Harmon. Aside from what he does over at Yahoo, Harmon's no for his amazing work with reception perception, where he charts wide receivers and lets us know how well the wide receiver's performing even when he's not targeted. Matt and I sat down for over an hour and really dug through this class. We talked about the high end guys that everyone loves, but we spend more time on the question marks that exist with a lot of the second and third tier receivers in the class. I really think you're gonna dig the conversation. Now, before I get into the discussion, I want to remind you guys to check out Underdog Fantasy. A lot of the stuff that you'll hear between Matt and me, you can use that information to your advantage with your best ball drafts, and there are best ball drafts going on right now over on Underdog. With best Ball, you can get a draft done in minutes, or you can opt in to a slow draft where you get an eight hour clock. Once you finish the draft, there's nothing more to do. There's no team management, no waivers, no lineup setting. Your lineup is optimized for you each week during the season based on performance because there's a lot of cool strategy involved. I'm play on doing more best ball content this summer on this show so we can all learn together. So make sure you're signed up now for when that content hits. Just head to Underdog Fantasy Dot com or download the Underdog app and when you sign up use promo code late Round for a one hundred dollars deposit bonus. That's promo code Late Round. Mister Harmon, it's good to chat with you once again. You were on this show last year to talk wide receivers with last year's class. This year's class better than last year's, i'd say in total. You do a lot of charting with wide receivers, whether they're in the NFL or with prospecting, and you do this through what you've deemed and called reception perception. For the people who have not consumed that have no idea what reception perception is all about, which I'm sure there's not many of them. But can you sort of talk about why you started in and what it's all about.

00:02:55
Speaker 2: Well, yes, mister Zach Reeson, I can do that. Thank you for having me on your show and ask such a great question to start. Yeah, so, a reception perception for people who are not familiar is the methodology that I came up with about ten years ago now just a little over ten years ago to evaluate the wide receiver position. And the reason I started it was that I wanted to answer The biggest question that I had about football, which is, to me, when watching games on Sunday, like, what the hell are these wide receivers doing when they run off the screen, Because you know, as fantasy players, we definitely know this that a wide receiver is lucky to get eight to ten targets in a game, Like, that's a good number. You feel pretty good about that. JJ's usage thread on Twitter on Sunday night. They get eight to ten targets, they're probably gonna have some pretty good little marks there in the usage thread. But we know that they're also running, you know, thirty plus routes of game sometime you know they're playing sixty plus snaps. So to me, because wide receiver production is so inherently dependent and affected by other variables, I wanted to find a way to go in and essentially give the guys credit for and value those other snaps when they're not targeted. And really the biggest thing to me was I wanted to try to quantify the qualitative reality of route running and getting open and really assignment execution if if we're getting right down to it, so that's what reception perception is. I go in over an eight game sample for NFL players and eight games when enough film is available for college players as well, chart every single route that they run, every single snap where they line up, because to me, the longer I've done this JJ, the talent evaluation part is always going to be fun and like how good? How good is this guy? And like, oh my god, yeah, he's ninetieth percentile at beaten man coverage. That's electric. But to me, I've almost found more joy and like trying to categorize these players and Okay, this guy has some bad indicators in this section of his profile, but this indicator over here could kind of point to like maybe if he changes positions inside the position a little bit, there's a good indicator there. So again, alignment is really sort of where it all trickles down from there. But really, the main metrics of people love are success rate versus man'sone press coverage, how often they run each route holt and they get open on each route type. There's ancillary metrics to like contested catches and breaking tackles in space. So really I'm trying to paint the full picture of who a wide receiver is outside and isolated from their surrounding variables.

00:05:21
Speaker 1: So let's talk reception perception a little bit. I know that you have the big three wide receivers as your top three wide receivers in this class. Whether it's Melik Neighbors, Marvin Harrison Junior, Roma Dunz, people have those three sort of clustered up in some way, shape or form. I'd say most people probably have Marvin Harrison and Melak Neighbors over Romadunza, but there are plenty of people who love Romadunza. Instead of digging into those players and saying, you know, what they're great at, what they're bad at, let's just say that they're very good. Okay. I want to ask you who you see as top comps for those guys, because I think it'll really allow people to see their differences between the three. And then also it's just fun to do comps.

00:06:04
Speaker 2: One hundred percent. I did a series this year, video series on Yahoo about comps because I've sort of come all the way around on comps. You know, when we first started doing this, JJ and you were in it a little before I was. But you know, you get into at the beginning of it's like comps man, that's like, let me highbrow comps's that's such surface level analysis whatever. But the longer you spend around the game, especially like studying a specific position like this, actually really like comps, especially because with perception perception, I have, like I said, ten plus years now of data to really put like not even just like, oh, a feeling based comp but this guy actually aligns to this player in certain data points. And I know you have that with your model as well too, which makes it a pretty fun kind of comparison here when we're comparing comparisons. So I did this series on Yahoo. It was aggressive and cautious comps all for five of the prospects this year, so for the top three, and yeah, I'm with you that all these guys are good. My one like mission statement for this class is all three of these guys are in my stacked rankings from the last four draft classes. They're all Tier one prospects. And because of that, if you like this guy over this guy, that's cool with me. Okay, you like this guy over to this other one, I'm fine with that. Okay. Yeah, it's about like preference and kind of what you like at the position. There are certain things I value at the position that other evaluators are are not gonna value as much, and they're gonna put you know, maybe size and tackle breaking ability over like technique and route running, whereas I am kind of like a technique in route running and assignment based execution snob. So there are certain things that I value more there. So long story short, and saying that is, I like all these three players. I'm not gonna get in like a ten tweet argument with anybody if they like, you know, Malik Neighbors over Romadunze or vice versa. Okay, like guess up to you. But so kind of comparisons for these two guys, and I'll start with Marvin Harrison Junior, who is my top prospect in this class. Had a strong debate back and forth between him and Rama Duness who's my best receiver in his class. I do think it's Marvin Harrison, like just a touch for a couple of different reasons we can get into. I think, you know, from an aggressive comp perspective, he is very similar to like an AJ Green with a little sprinkling of Julio Jones as well, because I think he Green is sort of the peak of that linear X receiver ARC type where you just kind of straight line player. You cana line him up on the line of scrimmage, but he can give you a lot from an inbreaking route perspective. I do think that Marvin Harrison profile is very similarly to Green at the NFL level, But I think because he did not test like from an athleticism standpoint, you know, the combine or pro day, it's almost like he's kind of gotten. We forget that he's a freak like he really is. When you watch him like a freak show. The way he is so flexible and getting in and out of windows and working leverage against his own coverage. He's he's polished. He's like weirdly polished for a college prospect, honestly. But I do think the high tier athleticism and that's where that's like shade of Julio Jones also comes into it. My cautious comp for him was like Mike Evans. I think Mike Evans is a underrated route runner. He's an underrated separator. People think of him as just one of these jump ball type receivers. He's not. He's a detailed technician who isn't an elite separator, but is a well above average separator against man in press coverage. I think that if Marvin Harrison just kind of gets his like median positive outcome, he's a Mike Evans type player, never a top five player at the position, but a consistent kind of top fifteen to tennis receiver in the league.

00:09:39
Speaker 1: So then who do you have? By the way, I should say that aj Green was the model's top comp for Marvin Harrison as well. So anytime you have that alignment and there's a guy that we'll talk about later who Matt Waldman and I had an identical comp for too, anytime you can see that and you have that synergy, I think you are looking strictly at analytics, which is what the model's doing. And then if you're looking and charting this stuff and looking at the film, I think that's a good sign about that player as long as that comp you know, is something that that looks pretty favorable.

00:10:14
Speaker 2: Question does your do your comps with with the model? Does it take in like height and weight at all?

00:10:20
Speaker 1: Yes, So height and weight is not a metric or not not a not a piece of the model. A wide receiver doesn't care at all in terms of the score of the player. I don't care what the size is of the guy, but whenever it's finding comps, yes, it'll look at production metrics and it'll look at height and weight stuff. So I think that's probably why the aj Green thing was more of a match than like a Mike Evans type, right, just because of the thickness of the body and stuff like that. But yeah, so it's interesting to see that you also had aj Green mentioned what about Roma Dunza.

00:10:50
Speaker 2: How about how I was just gonna say, on the on the Mike Evans thing, people really get at you with comps about like he's Marvin Harrison six three and like two to ohero or to whatever. Mike Evans is huge. I'm purely just kind of comping their styles of play and like potential career utilization paths and like stuff like that. To me that I mean, am I gonna come in here and compare Sterling Shepherd to Mike Evans or something like that. No, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna go with that far. But a few inches here or they're not gonna make a big difference, a few pounds here, they're not gonna make a huge difference. But Roma Dunza. Big fan of Roma Dunsay. Like I said, it really was close to me in terms of the final ranking as to who I was gonna put at the top of the class, between him and Marvin Harrison. My aggressive comp for Roma Dunza was DeVante Adams because I think their games are so so similar. They're guys that just really don't have a clear cut flaw in their game. Obviously we're talking about Devanta Adams who he became in the NFL, not who he was in his first couple of seasons, but clean route runners, a plus technicians, great hands. I mean, Roma Dunay in the eight game sample for perception perception did not drop a pass. He's obviously a contested catch Maven, but the technique in the route running off the line of scrimmage is very similar for those guys, and they're they've got a little some something after the catch. They're not, you know, neither one of these guys is Deebo Samuel Malik nighbors type after the catch, but certainly not a net negative in the open field. They can make the first guy miss and pick up extra yardage. My cautious comp for Roma Dunza is Alan Robinson, you know, a high quality X receiver for years that is a good route runner, good separator, but not at the elite level, especially against zone coverage. But obviously it was a contested catch threat downfield as well. So I think that kind of gives you kind of a good I feel how I feel about Roma Dunze, which is just I think he's got a very high floor as a player, but I do think the ceiling is extremely high as well if he continues to get better and work at the craft.

00:12:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, whenever we were prospecting and starting our work in like January February, you and I were going back with texts and I was talking about Adunza a little bit and his top comp for me was DeAndre Hopkins, which obvious say that's a good one for a player to DeAndre Hawkins is a top comp. And then one of them was Drake London for a Dounza, and then one of them was Michael Floyd, and that that to me is the biggest separator between the three the big three wide receivers, is that there's you know, there's breakout score and all this stuff that doesn't favor a Dunzay quite as much as the other two. But yeah, I mean, and he's not an early declared either, which I sent an email blast out this past week talking about how early declare status is sometimes and often very overrated by the analytics world. It's not something that that you really need to to say, Oh, this guy's not an early declare. Therefore I'm gonna fade him in my rookie draft because at the end of the day, A Dunza still has an eighty six breakout score, which is still pretty strong. But yeah, I do think that, you know, just because there's that like small, little Michael Floyd things sitting there. But here's the thing, Matt, Like, I look back at like non early declares or even early declared, like like busts that happened in the first round, and I look at some of them and I'm like, you know what, Kendall Wright didn't have that bad of a profile, or you know, Michael Floyd didn't have that bad of a profile. I'm not saying that, I you know, like, I'm not saying like, oh, I was right, Michael Floyd is good or Kendall Wright is great. I just think that there's so many things that happened from college to pros where careers can just hit this downward spiral and they just don't pan out and things aren't really clicking between the ears. Like stuff like that happens, right, and it could happen to any of these guys hypothetically, like realistically it could still happen.

00:14:32
Speaker 2: Right.

00:14:32
Speaker 1: We're not saying that is a full proof thing. And so you know, whenever we throw out comps sometimes it's like, yeah, you know, Michael Floyd comp is scary. But Michael Floyd was still a first round pick, Like he was still looked at as a good prospect, and there were things that people loved about him, and he had random moments in like a quarter of a game.

00:14:50
Speaker 2: And I was just gonna say, like, both of those guys had moments in the league, right, Kendall. Kendall Wright had our buddy rich Reebo right and a whole like piece about PPR production, you know, because he was like productive, Michael Floyd had two years. We talked about this with Tory Smith on my show because I know he's a key's a comp for for Brian Thomas Junior. And people are like, oh, Tory Smith, Gross, It's like, well, Tory Smith had a good productive start to his career. You look at Michael Floyd again, I'm not neither of us are sitting here saying like retroactively, No, Michael Floyd was was really really good. But from his second to his second to fourth season, he had one thousand and forty one yards, five touchdowns, eight and forty one six touchdowns, eight and forty nine six touchdowns. Like, that's not what you want out of your first round pick. Necessarily, it's certainly not what you want out of your first round rookie pick in fantasy. But it's not like a worthless player or you know, it's not it's ending white.

00:15:45
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, exactly exactly. It's not like the end of the world, especially because you're you're sandwiching that between DeAndre Hopkins and Drake London. It's all right, chill out, guys, like, don't don't freak out about that percent.

00:16:00
Speaker 2: And and by the way, those guys are all the same positional arc types of you know, yeah, we're somewhere in the range there of Okay, DeVante Adams maybe to DeAndre Hopkins to Alan Robinson to Drake London, like somewhere on that spectrum of X receiver.

00:16:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, let's talk about Molik Neighbors. Give me the comp for him, high end, low end, whatever you want to do.

00:16:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, Melik Neighbors. I do think the aggressive comp for him for the series I went with Yahoo was Brandon Ayuk. Brandon Ayuk, I think is the pinnacle of the wild horse route runner arc type. You know there's players way down on the low end of that, but I think Ayuk is a guy that you know, when he's coming out of college, like you probably could have said some of the same not not all of them, but some of the same criticisms about his route running that you might nitpick with brand with Malik Neighbors, where especially Malik Neighbors I think is actually actually way further along than Ayuk. But you see in the NFL, Ayuke develops into in my opinion, a top five rout run in the league, Like a guy that was an elite receiver and all Pro caliber receiver before this year on film, like he's been that guy for eminent Because of that development as a player, I think that's sort of the peak outcome for Elik Neighbors is he becomes a Brandon Auke level receiver where we forget that Brandon Ayuk is like a freak show after the catch because we actually don't really care because he's developed into such an elite receiver before the ball arrives, and I think that's the ideal outcome for Elik Neighbors. A couple other more like cautious comps for me were DJ Moore still very good, and the one I really like actually is Garrett Wilson because I see him very similarly like as the Garrett Wilson of this class. I actually think, as much as we're excited about this draft class, the top of it does feel very similar to twenty two. And I actually think that there were a couple of players that didn't, you know, necessarily haven't panned out just yet in Jamison Williams and Johan Dotson that I really like ahead of some of the guys that are getting some steam in this draft class, just as pure prospect profiles. But I was a big dots and fan. I still have a big dots and fan. But that's a topic for another time. But with the top three in that draft class, it was kind of just like your pure perimeter X receiver that's Strake London, that's Marvin Harrison. There's your like underrated technician that some of the Dynasty bros. Hates. That's Roma Duns and that's Chris Olave. But Garrett Wilson again, was that like wild horse route runner in college. But he's a guy that showed you an ability to separate even when his fundamentals weren't all the way tight, and like from a tackle breaking perspective, his scores in terms of his in space work and reception perception were the best in that class. And they're very similar to Molik Neighbors, who's the best in this class. And I think that if Malik Neighbors tightens up some of those fundamentals like Garrett Wilson did, who had an over eighty percent success rate versus press coverage in his rookie season, which historically, like, if you hit over eighty percent as a rookie in reception perception, you are a stud receiver. Somewhere along the way, you're gonna become a stud receiver in the NFL. So I think Garrett Wilson's well on his way to that. And like again, if Malik Neighbors takes that development as a rookie, I think we'll be having that same conversation with him at the end of his first or second season.

00:19:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tom com for Neighbors was OBJ And you know, I don't know if that's necessarily thinking about what you just said, what I've seen with Neighbors. I don't know if it's as stylistically apt as like a DJ Moore because DJ Moore was another one for him. But I will say analytically, Neighbors just looks out of this world because of what happened last year. The reason why I have Harrison ahead of Neighbors is because Harrison has done this now for two years in totally different environments with different competition. I mean, like you just should feel so good about Marvin Harrison Junior as a prospect, right, like, like the safety and ceiling is just there, whereas you know, I still think the safety is there for Neighbors, but maybe it's just a little bit below where a Marvin Harrison is at the wide receiver four consensus wise right now looks like Brian Thomas. I don't know actually if you have him at wide receiver four or not, But are there any major concerns that you have with Thomas? Is it a very very clear drop to Thomas or any of the other wide receivers after this big three.

00:20:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually do have Thomas at four, and I kind of have him just a little bit almost. You could call it a no man's land or or you know, you could call it in its same tier between Like there's a clear drop off to me from the top three to Thomas, and I kind of think there's a drop off from Thomas to like the next group of guys who are more like end of round one, early round two players. With Thomas, it's it's funny because he's this athletic freak show, right, so you think, oh, low floor, high ceiling player. I actually think these kind of guys give you a floor because I see him working out as a vertical threat and a big play threat in an offense if he's deployed correctly. I guess if we're talking about red flags for him as a player, this isn't necessarily a red flag, but it is an interesting note. Like sixty seven point one percent of his charted routes and reception perception where a slant, a nine route, or a curl route that is very stripped down. I do think that's going to require some flexibility from his next coaching staff in terms of how we deploy him early, but it's not too dissipl We've seen this work out before DK metcalf. Actually, in his rookie season, sixty seven point four percent of his routes were slant curl or nine routes. So there is a path for these kind of guys. But what I like about Brian Thomas is that, yeah, he's only you see the route running get better, He's only running a handful of routes, but he shows you some kind of glimpses of him being able to win on other routes overall, like solid success rate versus man, solid success rate vers zone. And I really was a fan of his work off the line of scrimmag where he's a seventy three point nine percent success rate versus press coverage, which is a really good number, especially for a guy that I do think needs to play as a vertical X receiver. So I don't know if he ever has the upside to develop into a true legit number one, but I think he can be the peak of that volatile number two receiver ARC type where we've seen guys like Quentin Johnson come out of the draft that he's definitely in that archetype. I think Brian Thomas is the more actualized version of that player. And then the year before, Christian Watson was kind of in that archtype, and I think he's another step down from that type of player. So I think Brian Thomas is a I feel pretty good about him, even if I'm not one hundred percent sure he ever becomes a number one like elite wide receiver, but I think he can be a very useful player in the league.

00:22:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, and from a fantasy perspective, even if he's not that true number one, getting like a twenty six twenty seven percent target share in his offense, you would imagine pretty high a dot, pretty high leverage situations that he's being targeted in. And so like there's a very real chance that I don't want to say like he wouldn't be as valuable on a PPR format or anything like that. I think that it's all it's all very similar. But I do think that like the efficiency can make up for a career twenty to twenty two percent target shair as opposed to you know what, the other three guys that we just talked about they're they're gonna be up there, They're gonna be seeing like Justin Jefferson type target shairs eventually in their careers, whereas maybe we don't see that from a guy like Brian Thomas. But think about like Martavis Bryant at his peak before things went south for him, where it was like this dude could catch three passes and be a wide receiver one in a given week in fantasy football.

00:23:29
Speaker 2: Because of that big playability, not everybody has the stomach for that type of receiver in fantasy. I totally understand that, but I'm generally pretty open to volatility from a fantasy perspective and honestly from a real life perspective, if you have the right environment to stick a guy that I do think is gonna be volatile, and Brian Thomas, like I think about the Colts as a potential landing spot for him. You have a guy that you already feel pretty good about funneling twenty five plus percent of your offense through, and Michael Pittman a really solid separator. You have a guy in Josh Downs that I'm a big fan of as a slot receiver. But like we can just say to Alec Pierce. Hey, thanks for your contributions, but we're gonna put Brian Thomas in the exact same role that you've been kind of hanging out in. I don't know if ultra patient Chris Ballard is going to want to give up on Alec Pierce that fast, but just like that's the type of environment I kind of want to see Thomas landon so that not only can he be that bolatile number two type for fantasy, he can also kind of be that boltle number two type for real life. But yeah, it's funny you bring up Artabis Brian who. That was my cautious comp for Brian Thomas because I think I do think the farther we get away from Martavis Bryant, like the myth of him as a player is a little more than what the reality was. And then the aggressive com for me was DK Metcalf who, again, if we get him fully developed, because I think Dk has gotten a little underrated as a technician, the farther he's gone into his career sor the inverse there, I think that's kind of the spectrum of player we could see from Thomas.

00:24:52
Speaker 1: Let's talk Xavier Worthy. He's getting steamed up because he ran a very fast forty time. I think that if he hadn't done that at the combine and we'd probably be saying, oh, yeah, it's probably a solid second round pick. But now there's plenty of talk that he's going to go in round one. But at the same time, you know, I'm I'm obviously gonna fade athleticism if that's going to impact draft capital or impact rookie draft capital too, Like that's very important, Like if if the if the market's going to overstate athleticism and testing a wide receiver, I will fade that all day long. But at the same time, Xavier Worthy really really interesting production profile. The guy had an unbelievable freshman season. But there is some concern. He has a third best breakout score in this class, behind only Moliku Neighbors and Marvin Harrison Junior, and so I do have some concerns though, because after his freshman year he had his best, most productive year from like a yards per team pass attempt standpoint, and such things got worse from a production standpoint, and some of that had to you know, some of that might have had to do with the fact they added some competition. You know, they ad ad Mitchell this past year things changed there. But at the same time, I you know, it just brings up a lot of questions. It's almost like this like Rondell Moore type production profile without the injury, right, and given the size, even if this isn't really that big, like that appropriate of a comparison, it's just hard to not think about how that kind of went for a guy. Like more so, do you have concerns with Worthy and where is he sort of is he in at the top of this next bucket that you were talking about or is he closer to the bottom?

00:26:25
Speaker 2: Uh? Funny first of all, like it brings up kind of the beginning point where I talk about like wide receiver productions dependent on other variables, like including your teammates. Right. I was having this conversation with Charles McDonald the other day where people like, yeah, why did Savi You're Worthy get worse? Like the longer he played in college from production sandpoints like well the last year they had like a legit other dude there. You know, like I wonder why it is of course like he got a little bit worse, and you know that doesn't have to be a negative for Xavier Worthy. It just is kind of the reality of what was happening before and then what was happening in that final season. And I do think Xavier Worthy, like the elevator pitch here is just I think he does more real wide receiver things better than some of the like certainly the Rondell Moore types or some of these other guys. You know, when you look at like our buddy Scott Barrett posts the fastest forty times from the Combine and how those guys have translated fantasy, you see names like Jerome Mathis in there.

00:27:19
Speaker 1: JJ Nelson and stuff.

00:27:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, dri Archer, Like, let me tell you what Xavier Worthy I also like this is kind of my like very very very like whisper take is John Ross was good, Like I don't know what to tell you tell you guys, but like the film on John Ross was good, like he just couldn't see do.

00:27:38
Speaker 1: You think that it was do you think it was health or do you think it was like he was in the wrong era too, like like John Ross, yeay, might just be better than John Ross seven or eight years ago.

00:27:47
Speaker 2: Well, he probably shouldn't have gone ninth overall. Regardless, I'm not saying the film was ninth overall, like that already puts unfair expectations on you. But number one, he couldn't say healthy, and number two like and that leads to sort of the point with Xavier Worthy is that even if you have concerns about him, and I do have concerns about him, we could talk about him, even if you have concerns about him, Like this is the best time for a player like this to be coming into the NFL. I definitely think that he could end up being in that Some people are gonna call it the dreaded like better in real life than fantasy bucket, just more useful to an NFL team than to a fantasy football team or a dynasty team. I think that's if I had to bet on it, I bet that if he hits, he hits into that sort of bucket of players. But yeah, I do think Worthy shows you some legit route running chops, Like his success rate vers zone coverage is eighty point seven percent. That's a fifty ninth percentile mark, which is by the way, like I know this is confusing for people, but like JJ's fifty ninth percentile because he's just got a lot more players from in his database than like, what I'm charting is a lot worse than my fifty ninth percentile. Me and the I mean shout out to my discord. A lot of a lot of great people in there, a lot of smart people in there that really want to talk percentiles. We had a whole conversation about this from a sample size perspective. I'm not charting every single college receiver, so fifty ninth percentile sounds bad, But for me, it's actually like, it's fine, Okay, I'm not freaking out about fifty nine percentile. His man coverage score sixty eight point four percent, that's pretty solid, but the size shows up in so many areas. His press coverage work is a twenty eighth percentile score, which I am alarmed by twenty eighth percentile. You know, his contested catch rate is among the worst of the last four draft classes. He gets brought down on first contact all of the time. Like, these are areas where size shows up. That doesn't mean he can't be a useful player in the NFL, but I do think it just kind of again puts him in that bucket of we need to work around his skill set. We need to find ways to get him on these like pre snap motion plays. Okay, I think he could be great on that. But do I think he can just line up an outside receiver and go to work? That's where I have questions.

00:29:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we need him in Kansas City, is what you're saying.

00:29:54
Speaker 2: Enough already with like the little tiny gadgety receiver gadget adjacent receivers in Kansas City? Like but but but is he not?

00:30:04
Speaker 1: Is that not? What? What that offense? Getting him into space, allowing him to uh? And obviously the compliment like let's just assume everything's fine with Rashi Rice, which yeah, we might not want to assume that, But is that not the perfect compliment? I mean, they're they're essentially So what's funny? I bring that up too, because the other thing that I get irritated about with his size is people are not factoring in base rate enough whenever they talk about size and fantasy football wide receiver, because you can look at the population of sub one hundred and seventy pound running or wide receivers and say they're bad because they usually do not give you much production. Well, since twenty eleven, Matt the the one hundred and seventy pounds sub one hundred and seventy pound wide receivers that have gotten drafted in the top one hundred of the NFL drafts since twenty eleven. You have Marcuse Brown, who, by the way, on Kansas City, now, DeVante Smith, Tank Dell, and two two at Well. And I think anyone one realized that the Atwell pick was just kind of out of left field whenever they made that pick, right, That's it, though, Like that's all We're talking about a seventy five percent hit rate for the most part. Like none of those guys, I mean, DeVante Smith has obviously been pretty productive in fantasy and you know, it's like a high end wide receiver too. Markus Brown maybe didn't totally realize that potential throughout his career yet. Maybe that happens in Kansas City, we'll see. And then Tank Dell coming off a really spectacular rookie season. Like when you factor in the base rate and you factor in the idea that we just don't see this kind of wide receiver very often, it's a lot easier to buy into that wide receiver then, And I'm gonna stay, I'm gonna I'm gonna stick with the Kansas City thing, and still I get irritated by that just being the land. It's like Dallas with running backs, it's like, yeah, you know, you go someone asked you. It's like, oh, like where do you want this running back to go? I wanted to go to Dallas. Of course I want him to go to Dallas. Like that's the any running back, I don't care who the running back is, just put him on Dallas because there's no one else there and it's a pretty good offense. But with Kansas City, I think with this kind of player in particular, where the worries that you have, obviously those worries are squashed a little bit. But at the same time, sure, some of the guys that have gone there that have sort of been in this like sort of speedy arc type, they don't always pan out. You know. We saw like a Mikol Hardman for instance, just not be able to do much in that offense. But Xavier Worthy is a better player than a guy like Hardman.

00:32:21
Speaker 2: Oh no question for sure. And I think he's better than Sky Moore like who who also really isn't in this arch type. He was like a different type of slot receiver coming out. But still and like they traded for Kadarius Tony, which was a bad move at the time and looks worse you know going coming, you know coming, but not as good now.

00:32:40
Speaker 1: But again not as good as xavi'er Worthy. Like like, none of those guys have been Xavier Worthy esque, right, Like none of them have been close to this kind of profile. And maybe I'm wrong, maybe you see something different, but I not know.

00:32:53
Speaker 2: I actually have them all in the same bucket of like like like pre draft profile, like where I would rank them. I think they're all in the same tier to me. But they're just they're they're very different players. But my only thing with the Kansas City thing and this is like we don't have to stick a long on this, but I just think that we have you get Worthy in there, and now we've got three guys that we need to work around. Like based on who Rachid Rice was as as rookie, Yeah, and maybe he grows and develops and blah blah blah whatever who he was as a rookie. They took a guy that was playing outside boundary receiver running go routes and curl routes at SMU and took him and stuck stuck, stuck him in the slot and like ran crossing routes and slant routes and I don't re yeah screens. I don't really want to do much more than that with him right now based on who he is a player, and like Marquise Brown's another guy that I'm trying to move him into the slot. Sometimes I'm trying to play him off line of scrimmage and Xavier Worthy is I mean actually think Markus Brown's a really good comparison for for Xavier Worthy somebody where yeah we can YadA YadA the size, but the size shows up in the NFL with with Marquise Brown. Doesn't mean he's not a good player. I like Marquis Brown by I think he's like a strong number two receiver, and I think get best Xavier Worthy probably a strong number two receivers. So I'm overall pretty positive on Xavier Worthy. I think he's got a solid profile. But you know, kind of the long and short of it is just I do think he's gonna have some limitations. I only push back on the Kansas City thing because like go get a real like outside X receiver and like complete that room is where I'm at I get.

00:34:23
Speaker 1: I totally get that. I I was thinking of that more from an isolated standpoint, right, like like like Xavier Worthy, forget every like forget what's going on. I'm saying schematically, that's what would just be so brilliant for a player like Worthy. You make great points though, because I'm with you with Rashid Rice, I've been talking about that on the show throughout the off season. Is that like we just don't know yet about how that development might go again off the field stuff aside, We just don't know how things are really gonna to move forward. And Marcus Brown is one of the comps that I have for Xavier Worthy analytically. But let's move on. Let's talk about Worthy's teammate this past year, Adni Mitchell. I have I have many thoughts on Mitchell, so I'm very very curious as to where you're at with him.

00:35:07
Speaker 2: Yeah. I actually like Mitchell a lot more than I like Xavier Worthy. I have him ranked higher. I think he's just it's funny because we could we should say this about the Texas offense. That offense sucks, Okay, good for college football, awful to watch on film. I mean it's got like all the check boxes of college offenses. I don't like, we got a shaky quarterback. We've got that like RPO, you know, so many, so many RPOs. We've got half field reads, we got receivers kind of hanging out on one side, you know. Not just Adie Mitchell. He gets the brunt of like the criticism, I think because there are other character concerns there from from people I've talked to. But everybody's doing it. Okay. There's like plays where Adie mitchell' is the read and like Xavier Worthy is doing the little trot out there slant route thing. So everybody's doing it. It's it's just a rough offense to watch on film. So the fact that I charted Xavier Worthy Ady Mitchell back to back, those are two days in my life I would I would like back. But alas, I came out of it thinking that just like, if you want to see in that very gimmicky environment a receiver doing NFL things, it is definitely Ady Mitchell. And this is a guy that just lines up at pure x receiver. Among the guys I've sampled so far, he's been outside on eighty three percent of his sampled snaps he's been on the line of scrimmage eighty two point eight percent. That is the highest rate again of the players that I've charted so far. So he fits pretty well in that X receiver archetype, you know, alongside the guys we talked about at the top of the class. He's kind of that next player or two tiers from the top guys down from that. I think his route running is solid. Man, he's very George Pickens ish where the zone coverage of stuff is not where you want it. He's not a full field separator. But there are also times where I think he shows you this style to run routes where it's very successful against press and man coverage. Where seventy four point one percent sess rate verus man that's a really good number. Seventy four point four percent success rate verse press another very good number. Again, the zone coverage stuff is a little lower, but it's kind of this way that like DeAndre Hopkins runs his routes a little bit where he like kind of lulls you to sleep and then shakes you back inside. Mitchell shows you that he's got good ball skills. There are one hundred per one hundred percent risks with this player. There's no doubt about that, both on and off the field. But I do think the film is really good for Ady Mitchell and somebody that I'd kind of like to take a chance on.

00:37:34
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's the thing is that I've been trying to like wrap my head around with this class and with like players like Mitchell and a guy that we'll talk about in a second in keyon Coleman is you have this big three where it's really hard to poke holes in their games, right, and then you get to Brian Thomas gets you know, there's there's some things, but you know, still a very complete prospect for the most part. Like there's there's a lot to like, I should say, And then you start to get to like Worthy and you're like, okay, size and YadA, YadA, YadA, And then you have I mean you can include Worthy in this. You have this giant mass of wide receivers that are gonna go late first into the second round, late second round of the NFL draft, And we can sit here and say this guy's bad because of X, Y and Z, But you can play that game for a lot of these wide receivers. Yeah, like like that I think is the key here whenever I tell you the things I'm about to tell you about ad Ni Mitchell, because this is this is my analytical concern about Mitchell. And you know you mentioned the volatility of his profile. There seems to be a lot of volatility his profile. So right now he's projected to go in round one. I heard on the Established a Run podcast with Adam Schefter. Schefter thinks it's going to be like earlier than what people believe. Right, So let's say it's early twenties, maybe even late teens for a guy like Mitchell. If that happens, if he goes in round in round one, since twenty eleven, this is actually since twenty fourteen because I use PFF and that's when they started charting and getting us the yards per out run data in college, that would be he would have the worst yards per route run of any first round wide receiver in their best season. So the best season yards per out run of any first round wide receiver since twenty fourteen, and it's by a pretty significant margin. It's one point seven to two. Next on that list is at two point twenty seven, which is Zay Flowers, right, and then if you look at breakout score, which is the metric that my model uses, fifty being an average breakout score, he's below average. And if you look at first round wide receivers with sub fifty breakout score since twenty eleven, you get Cordero Patterson, Kelvin, Benjamin, Kevin White, Philip Dorsett, and Josh Doxon. Then if you go below sixty, you then add Taevon, Austen, Henry Ruggs, Jalen Rager, and Kadarius Tony to that list. So there's just a lot of bad signal here with Ady Mitchell. You know, maybe if he's stuck around another year, these numbers would have improved a good bit, you know, like maybe, And there is the teammate factor and teammate score that favors him because not only do you have Xavier Worthy, but you have Jatavian Sanders as well. They're tight end who could get pretty good draft capital, could have an I score and that'll help his teammate score in the model. And so there are these like secondary things that you know, draft capital will be there, there are these other things that will still elevate his score to some degree. But I'm in full agreement. At the very least, you know you like him more than I do. But I'm in agreement that this is at least a very volatile profile.

00:40:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is where I think you know me. I'm not one of these knucklubs. It's just like, well, okay, thanks for all that trust the film, like I because by the way, the film has questions too, like he's not a clean prospect from a profile standpoint, like if he fails because of things he's simply doing on the field that would show up in certain areas of reception perception, Like I said, we're talking about a success rate for his zone coverage that's the thirty first percentile. Yeah, the others though, the man press stuff is really good, but again that could end up putting him in the in that like boom bust x receiver type profile, like a George Pickens type. And I know George Pickens like end of season numbers look really good from his second season. Anybody who rostered George Pickens in Fantasy knows that that was not like an enjoyable ride from from start to finish. So like that, and I think Pickens is actually one of the higher ends of that range of outcomes in terms of those ex receivers. But when we're in like I think, when you hear something like the yards for route run there, like it's worth kind of almost picturing it of like a pie chart of blame because, like I said, wide receiver productions depending on outside variables, Like where what do we split up in terms of that pie chart of blame for why Mitchell is down there? He shares part of that blame. There is no question about that. He's not at zero percent his his pie is not like this tiny sliver. Okay, He's got to take a help in himself. But I also look at just like if you're telling me if you if you if you stick Xavier Worthies route charts, forget like who's good, who's better, whatever, you just stick like Xavier Worthies route chart and then adie Mitchell's route chart like next to each other, and tell me that one guy is at that pure downfield X receiver position and the others kind of the off the ball, you know, slot more so slot snaps kind of runs the Mickey Mouse routes of this gimmicky offense with a quarterback who can't throw the ball consistently downfield, Like who's gonna have the lower yards per route run? I would bet on Mitchell's just resume profile, whatever you want to say, So I can do some explaining of as to why that is. But I also can't fully excuse it, like it has to be something you take into account, which is why even though I have him in my tier three of my stacked rankings, there are other guys I even prefer in that tier.

00:42:33
Speaker 1: Another guy who sort of has a volatile profile is Keon Coleman. You know, for me, he had a slightly better breakout score than Mitchell. He has a decent teammate scorer because not only is Johnny Wilson's been getting some steam recently, you know, out of that same offense, but Johnny Wilson actually had better like like per per your route run and like per like yards per team passing ten numbers than Keon Coleman this past.

00:42:58
Speaker 2: Do I have to charge? Do I have to charge Johnny Wilson?

00:43:01
Speaker 1: You should, because when I when I did his profile for the prospect guy, I was like, maybe he'll move the tight end because he's like two hundred. He's like this massive dude, right. But but if you look at his numbers, they're really not that bad. And then you comparing contrastic Keyon Coleman, and I have a lot of like theories to this too, but you can compare and contrastic Keyon Coleman, and uh, you know, it's it's like, wow, well, Johnny Wilson's not getting that much love or a ton of love, but Keyon Coleman is and not. At the time it was an even bigger discrepancy between the two. Then it makes you feel a little bit worse about Coleman himself. But teammates score wise, he plays at Michigan State. The year before the transfer to Florida State, he outproduced Jayden Reid. When Jayden Reid was Jaane reads a little bit banged up that final year. But when Jayden Reid was a senior, you know, he was the upperclassman and Keon Coleman was was not he was a sophomore at the time, because he's an early declare. And so to me, there's just a lot of weird stuff going on with Keon Coleman where I can't really pinpoint how I totally feel about him. I will say this, I'm liking the fact that it seems like his projected draft well, his draft projected draft capital has dipped, right, So if he does go more in like the early to mid second round, I'm gonna feel a lot better about him because that would then translate to like rookie drafts and him going a little bit later in rookie drafts, and then you feeling a little bit more comfortable taking that on. But do you see another volatile prospect in Keon Coleman.

00:44:23
Speaker 2: I think you have to consider him a volatile prospect. I also agree with you just overall that he's a very palatable round two pick. To me, he's not a guy that just because here's the difficult part about what we do right where we are talking like about players in a vacuum. We're talking about players and how they would apply theoretically to all thirty two teams. Right, Like I'm ranking Keon Coleman is wide receiver ten for or something in that range. I haven't like I so have a few guys to add whatever. But he's not gonna be a top five or top He certainly not gonna be a top six or seven player.

00:45:00
Speaker 1: For me.

00:45:01
Speaker 2: He's gonna be somewhere below that, but there are certain teams where if they took him at the end of the first round and they had a clear plan for him, I would kind of be okay with that because I think he has to has to come with a clear plan. But just from an overall perspective, for our end of it, yeah, he has to be considered a volatile player because this is a guy that finished below the thirty fifth percentile in success rate versus man and press coverage. His zone coverage success rate is actually not as bad as you think, right, Like, I know, the Keon Coleman route tree has made the rounds on Twitter, and there's a lot of red and all that stuff, and the color bros do not like the Keon Coleman route chart, and I like, you know, I totally get that. But there are some actual solid indicators in his profile. Like I said, fifty ninth percentile success rate versuszone coverage, but twentieth percentile against man, nineteenth percentile against press. That's not ideal. And if you look back at all the prospects I've charted, like we're talking about thirty two players have finished below the thirty fifth percentile in success rate versus man zone and press coverage at least two of the three. Kean Coleman and obviously finishes below two of the three. There are some that are below all three, but he's at least just two of the three. So thirty two players total have qualified there. Among the guys I've charted. Among those thirty two players, I mean, it's a lot of rough names. Okay, so is a lot of like do you remember Amara Darbo? Do you remember you know? I mean, there's Dante Pettis. So there's kind of like a lot of players that flamed out. There's a lot of guys that are just bottom of the depth chart type players. I would argue that there are like nine guys who have had moments in the league, you know, and some of those guys are like the Christian Watson's, the DJ Sharks, like these volatile deep threat types will fuller fits into this bucket. So you either need to kind of become a volat deep threat like that or where I think Keon Coleman fits into this. There are five of those thirty two players, so fifteen point six percent that have I would say are truly inarguable hits, and they're all big slot receivers. It's a'man Ross Saint Brown bad on the perimeter at USC, transitions to a big slot receiver. There's Cooper Cup who was really good against zone coverage, but not as great against man in press in college, and honestly early in his career in the NFL he struggled beating man press coverage before he's kind of gotten to the Cooper Cup we know now again he's that big slot receiver, Jujus M. Schuster bad on the perimeter at USC, big slot receiver, Tyler Boyd. He's a big slot receiver. You know that. That's Rashie Rice. He's the one from last year that's below all three bad on the perimeter at SMU. He wins as a big slot receiver in the NFL. So I think that's the path that Keon Coleman has to go down. And there are again parts of his profile that indicate he can be that type of player, like solid success rate on dig routes, just below average success rate on slant routes. Like the routes we think about Rashid Rice running in the in the chiefs offense, right, He's got, you know, hands to work in contested situations. I think there's some field for zone coverage, like that's what we want out of that big slot receiver archtype. But the risk there JJ is that there are guys in this list of players that I'm reading off here that are like Trailon Burks or Jonathan Mingo, these guys that in if you go look at their reception perception profiles to say, yep, these are guys that should play in the slot in the NFL. And then you get the Titans coaching staff that just throws Trailing Burkes out at X receiver. You get the Panthers last year who have Adam Thielen already in that big slot position, so they throw Jonathan Mingo outside and guess what, it don't work. So like that's where keyon Coleman right now before the draft is like risky to talk about because there's just a chance that like the next coaching staff that gets drafted to does not agree with this analysis and does not want to put him out of the perimeter and win jump balls. And history shows us that's a very risky bet.

00:49:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, And to what we said at the top, it's like you don't want to spend a first round pick on that probably, you know, like even if even if a team, even if a team has a good plan for that, I mean, you can you can get I don't want to say all of that kind of production because obviously, like an a'm and Ross Saint Brown doing what he does is special right to a decent degree. But at the same time, we know that that kind of production, just at a very very high level, is more replaceable than actually finding a very reliable outside perimeter receiver. Yeah.

00:49:38
Speaker 2: Well, none of these guys are first round picks that I just I read off, Yeah right, right, am and Ross Brown's a Day three draft pick. But like Juju was the second, she Rice was a second, Tyler Boyd was the second, Cooper Cup was a third. So yeah, I mean, and you know, those guys all really work their ass off to become great players in that position. So that's got to be a part of it as right.

00:50:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about Troy Franklin. I feel like I haven't really talked about him much on shows and on my show over the last couple months, but you know, very solid production profile. He has sort of more of a wiry frame, but he can get deep for sure. His production profile, I feel like my stuff doesn't like it as much as what others might see because it's giving the offense a little bit more context then maybe what others are seeing, Like maybe maybe mine's just factoring that in more or what have you. I don't know. He doesn't look bad by any of His breakout score is eighty nine and a half. That's great. He just doesn't have amazing project projected draft capital right now, at least compared to like even a Mitchell or a Coleman, just from a projected standpoint, and his teammates score like his, his surrounding situation and like obviously the quarterback situation and stuff favored him a little bit more than those guys. So what do you see about Troy Franklin? Like what do you are? You? Are you in? Are you out? Or is this just another volatile guy?

00:50:57
Speaker 2: Yeah? There are two receivers in this class that, like my opinion on them, changes game by game honestly, like if we want to be real, like route by route, it changes. And one of them is Troy Franklin. The other Zavier Lyguette, who we could talk about in a little bit, but like Troy Franklin's tough man because he's got some good like when his final reception perception profile comes out, he does have some really good indicators. I actually think he is a really really good route runner. The problem is is that he's like one hundred and seventy whatever pounds and he's so skinny, and again, it just shows up in all of the data, like you get you get hands on him, and it's gonna be a problem. Like you press him at the line, that's gonna mess him up. You work on slants over the middle, that's not gonna be as good as you want. You work on digs over the middle, that's not gonna be as good as you want. And we haven't even talked about his hands yet, which he doesn't trust his hands, Like it just is what it is, Like he's he's rough in contested situations and he has just like mind numbing drops. So it's it's really hard because I like his route running and he just needs to gain like fifteen pounds. Like I know he's very young, which also helps, Like, but somebody needs to get this guy on like five hundred more calories per day and like really start lifting weights because he needs because he I think he can stand to lose some explosiveness but gain some size because like the technique is all there. I really like I said, I really like the route ring, I really like how he sets people up. I really like his work against offman coverage and zone coverage in particular. It's just there are there are times where that size really shows up, and I just I'm struggling with how to project him to the league because he's a pure X receiver at Oregon, he mostly lines up on the line and runs a vertical route tree. I don't know that that's what I want him doing in the NFL, just because of the size. So I hate to keep harping on the size, but it just like the profile is gonna scream at you when you read it to harp on the size because all the things that would be impacted by that are issues.

00:52:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, what about Lad McConkie right now?

00:53:00
Speaker 2: Now?

00:53:00
Speaker 1: For me, you know, the big three, and then I Brian Thomas, and then I'm I'm going with the model model love Xavier Worthy. So I'm putting Worthy at five right now. Mcconkey's my wide receiver six, even though there are some really weird analytical things going on with him. But how do you feel about about his game and what did his reception perceptions say?

00:53:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, Lad McConkie is also my wide receiver six, just this one spot ahead of Ady Mitchell at wide receiver seven. So yeah, Lad McConkie, he's not your typical lunch pale, gritty slot receiver, like white slot receiver. He's a guy that really wins downfield. He runs great routes against man coverage. His own coverage press definitely gives him some trouble. So you're gonna want to scheme him away from press coverage. It's fine, you just you don't line him up at X. You line him off the line of scrimmage. You line him up in the slot sometimes, but God gets doubtfield man. And I think he runs some of the best out routes, like deep out routes in the class. And so when I noticed that that he's got an eighty three percent success right on out routes, it's among the best in the class. You know, he runs a lot of these routes too. I went back in the receipt perception database and tried to kind of find a comparison for him at like sort of that size ish and that type of route running. The first thing that pops up is Tyler Lockett, Like, I think he's kind of a Tyler Lockett ish type of player. You line him up in that flanker or you move him into the slot, and you get him working down the field. And I mean Lockett became an incredible, like tight coverage catch player. I think that Lad's not quite that good in tight coverage, but he's probably better than certainly better than Lockett at this point in his career after the catch, because he does have some explosive after catch data like tackle breaking in space data on reception perception. But Tyler Lockett also used to be a punk returner, so he wasn't always just like going down when somebody sneezed near him. There was a time where he was a threat in the open field. So I really like Lad mcconkee. I think he's a great like early second round pick to me.

00:54:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, you mentioned Xavier Lagette probably the weirdest production profile on the history of the game, if we're being honest. I mean the fact that he did literally, like I want to say nothing, because he caught some passes, but he basically did nothing production wise for the first four years at South Carolina and then last year everything came together and it wasn't just like, oh yeah, he had a pretty good season, like he balled out production wise in twenty twenty three. How are you feeling about Lagett? Is this? Are you? Are you grouping him with the Coleman Ady Mitchell, bigger bodied Let's just see what kind of happens DK metcalf type ARC type. Obviously, you know Keon Coleman might not be that, but like an ad Mitchell would. But are you grouping him that way? Or is there a little bit more stability there?

00:55:34
Speaker 2: Uh? Yeah? I mean I like Mitchell better than both Coleman and Xavier Legett. And I think I like Coleman better than I like Xavier Legett. But I wanted to go in here and find like a true X receiver that could be like an AJ Brown type. But I just is just not there. Like his route running is not there, his ability to beat press Man is not there. I think he's gonna be a guy that you have to cater his alignment. I think he's gonna be a guy that you have have to play off the line. You're gonna need to work with him a little bit, you know that being said, like he is really interesting on certain inbreaking routes. I do think he's a load after the catch. He shows a pretty good understanding working underneath against zone coverage. So like, again, he's another guy that I could sit here and kind of talk out of both sides of my mouth, which makes me think he's probably more of just like a third round player, like a guy that should go in the third round. Like I see people want to put him to the Bills at twenty eight, and that that scares the hell out of me. Like I I don't know about that. I mean, I think that he could end up working out, but the bottom line is that he's a developmental player still at the collegiate level, you know, like I think he was there was rockiness in his play in college and he's twenty three years old. Like how much of him I never like to do this, but like how much of it is just the fact that he's bigger than everybody eight like, and he's older than everybody, And you know, you don't have to win with nuance, and then you get to the NFL and like you're still not winning with nuance. But these are other like own men around you. I don't know, I do worry about that a little bit with him.

00:57:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, he definitely has not the best like profile overall. But the one thing that I do want to say and shout out there is that, you know, breakout score, the metric that I created this offseason, it's definitely gonna favor you know, guys who produced at a young age like Xavier Worthy, you know, having the freshman season that he had. But at the same time, if a player like Legette, you know, he's still you know, to be fair, he played five years, but he's still just a little over twenty three, Like he could have easily been closer to twenty four years old than he actually is. But with Legett, he had such an elite twenty twenty three that his breakout score is actually a little bit over seventy five. It's almost to eighty. And so because that season was so good. And what's really interesting is that when you look at top one hundred picks, assuming he goes in the top one hundred, which I think is probably a good bed at this point, Yeah, for sure, if he goes in the top one hundred, you know, are there are a few misses in there, but guys who had breakout scores in the ebony to one hundred range who were over twenty three years old since twenty eleven. That so, so we're talking like good breakout scores but old, which is a weird kind of combo to have. But you get like the Deebo Samuel, the Jaden Reed, the Sterling Shepherd. Calvin Ridley was one. He had a weirder situation because he was an early declare and he was still really old. But you know, regardless, regardless, Like my big thing with Laguette is I wonder, and I'm just saying this out loud like that you don't even have to answer this. I just wonder how the fantasy football market is going to react to him and if they're gonna be high or low on him, because yeah, we know that a lot of people look at the production this, you know, like there is a guy who only produced this fifth season, Like that is something that we want to avoid almost all the time. But when you you know, look at how good that season was, you look at draft capital a little bit. If he slips in rookie drafts, I'll gladly just throw the dart. You know, I'll gladly just say let's just see if this translates to some degree. But he doesn't, then that's where the fear would come into play totally.

00:59:02
Speaker 2: And I don't think anybody is really Deebo Samuel. That being said, I do think some of his reception perception like indicators, will look debo ish where he is. He's not debo after the catch, like nobody is debo after the catch, but he's But he's pretty explosive in space, and he does some real receiver stuff, you know, not a he's he's not really like a Jonathan Mingo type where you know, Mingo only had that one season and it wasn't anywhere close to as good as what zaber Lagett did. But he has a much better understanding I think of his own coverage. So he's another guy that just like I've kind of had to change my opinion kind of my not my opinion, but just how I'm viewing him because I thought, like, Okay, he's gonna be in this bucket with the top three guy, well not Malik Neighbors, but like Harrison and a Doonza and then Brian Thomas and Ady Mitchell. Like he's maybe that next X receiver. I don't think he is. I do think he's a guy you're gonna have to cater a role too.

01:00:00
Speaker 1: So you just brought up Deebo Samuel, So I guess I'll just talk about Malachi Corley because he is getting a decent amount of love. Potential second round pick, we'll see. The thing for me is that, you know, smaller school guy, his production really wasn't very good at all, even you know, I understand he had a bunch of screens and a bunch of targets behind the line of scrimmage and such, and they tried to kind of use him in that like kind of Debo esque role in college. But to me, there was a very very very clear a Maari Rodgers comp for Malachi Corley, who was another player who was this is the next Deebo Samuel, right. And I talked about this with Matt Waldman a little bit. You know, he gave his take on Corley, and I want to ask you the same question. Do you see Corley as a gadget player at the next level or do you see him really becoming a legit threat.

01:00:55
Speaker 2: I definitely feel better about him being a real receiver than I do. Then I did like Rondell Moore or a Mariy Rodgers. For God's sakes, I mean, yeah, yeah, that's tough because when you say Amari Rodgers, I immediately am like, yeah.

01:01:11
Speaker 1: I can. I can kind of see that.

01:01:13
Speaker 2: You know.

01:01:14
Speaker 1: That's the same reaction that Waldman had on the show too. It was like, and it's funny. I say this on every show that I do, where I bring this comp up and I say, go right now. If you don't believe me, go right now, go to Twitter or Google and just search a Mari Rodgers Deebo Samuel and there are articles and tweets about that comp.

01:01:32
Speaker 2: The not to pat our own backs here about Jayden Reid, but shout out to us for Jayden Reid. But like, the funny thing about the packers is that they have been trying to like weaponize this their motion packages for years. They've been trying to weaponize the pre snap motion stuff for so long, so they had it. I can't remember the player, and I'm embarrassed that I can't, because I should. I should remember every random wide receiverever But I think there was like a player before, even before Amari Rodgers that they were using on these like pre snap motion plays. Is like, I was just like eye candy. Nobody believes that's gonna be a thing. So they're like, all right, let's take Amari Rodgers and maybe he can be that guy. And they're like, yeah, well that didn't work out. And then they finally took Jayden Reid, who is the weaponized player those yeah right, So yeah, you have to get a real receiver on the other end of those pre snap motion plays to really get a defense to pucker up a little bit. So on the spectrum of like Jayden Reid to Amari Rodgers, I don't I think Mali. I think Malachi Corley is a little closer to like the Amari Rodgers than he is to the Jayden Reid for sure. Who I actually think Jayane Reid can do a lot more than some of the gimmicky stuff. Like I said, he is a real receiver. But yeah, I've just been kind of like there. I just feel like there's a Malachi Corley now in every draft, and like I like Malik Washington better than I like Malachi Corley. Yeah, he's not in that same He's not the same like Yack King tackle breaker or whatever. You know, he's got a good brand for himself, does Malakai Corley, And and there are certain offenses where I think that player can work out, but I do have questions about the real receiver stuff.

01:03:04
Speaker 1: I guess yeah, Look, Corley's got that dog and him for sure, like when you when you watch him play, it's crazy. But at the same time, you have to also give that college context in the program that he's playing at, Like he's not playing it in the SEC right, so it's gonna be a little bit easier to kind of accumulate and do what he's doing. And you know, breakout score, for instance, is adjusting for program strength. And so he had not only like a lower yards per team pass attempt number just in general, but then you adjust that for program and his breakout score is just zero because he just never hit the right thresh. He never got there because of all those adjustments. That's what that's what worries me about him. And that's why I think the Amari Rodgers thing, you know, at least makes some sense. Let's go from him to talk about a guy that I know you have to love, and that's Ricky Piersall. You know, you and I talked about Peersal in like February when I was on your show, and at the time, I feel like he wasn't like some people were on him, especially after like Senior Bowl stuff and whatnot, But it wasn't to the degree now because now like we're talking like potential early second round draft capital for Pearsall. Do you think that's Warranton? Do you think he is that good?

01:04:11
Speaker 2: That's where he should go? Man? I love Ricky Pearsall, big fan. You know, he's in terms of success rate versus man coverage and zone coverage, he's in shouting distance of the top three guys in the class. Like, he's that good in terms of his ability to separate. I think he's a really good route runner, unlike sort of the Xavier get like older guy is he just out there out athleting people like Ricky Piersol is doing it with route running a technique and setting guys up. And I just, man, I'm such a fan of him as a player. I have him ranked really high. I have him as my wide receiver five in the class. I just love the love the way he wins the route runner. I think he can play all three positions. That's the really cool part about his film is you get some glimpses of him playing an X. You get some glimpse of him playing off the ball at flanker, outside and in the and I think kind of where he ends up is probably more as a flanker slot receiver. But the fact that he can beat man coverage and his press coverage is like it's it's the lowest of the three, but it's still in a solid range. It's like just a bit above average. So that's fine. Yeah, I'm a big fan of Ricky piersall Man. I think he's gonna be a good player.

01:05:18
Speaker 1: Yeah. What's funny too, is that he was the one who analytically comped closest to Jayden Reid for me in this class. It was one of his top comps. Now, I don't think that it's a one to one thing, but the reason I think that the model was showing what it was showing is because they were just used in so many different ways in college, right, Like it's just this versatility that's just really really intriguing. And that's what got me on Pearsall when I was doing all my research and stuff. And it's great to see that it seems like every person who's really digging into this stuff and charting or you know, watching a lot of film is just just enamored with Ricky Piersall like they love Pearsau. So it feels like stud at the very least a pretty safe rookie pick at this point.

01:05:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, because, like I said, the route running is really good, but also he catches everything. It's just super reliable. I can see him being the way I've I've kind of talked about Ricky Piersall is that I can see him starting out his career as kind of that like quarterback's best friend. You know, he's the low read in the high low concepts, like all right, it's not there vertically, we get it to pierce All underneath. But I can then see his skill set expanding to being a guy that gets a hundred like Earns one hundred and twenty targets. I would love to see him land with a team like Pittsburgh that just needs like a real separator. I mean, from a fantasy perspective, I don't really want anybody to go to Pittsburgh, but still like theoretically a team that just kind of needs that reliable second receiver or a team that is like the Eagles, you know, where they need a three and maybe they're in a contract squeeze at some point. I just think there's a lot of room for him to to kind of develop and grow in the league.

01:06:50
Speaker 1: All Right, we've talked about a lot of wide receivers. Give me, give me something that you think should be hyped up more than they currently are. You know, there's obviously this is being dubbed as a very very good class. I mean, I don't think it's quite the twenty fourteen class, but it's definitely a good one. There's there's a lot of good wide outs here. Who were some guys that you think we should all at least be thinking of during draft time? And I should add Matt that when I asked this exact same question last year, you actually mentioned you might not even remember this, you mentioned Pookinakua as an answer this question, but at the time, no one knew how to pronounce his name. So if you go back and listen, I think we both just had a note. We're just like, oh, yeah, cool, Like I don't even remember how we said it, but but yeah, you mentioned Pookinakua, so big ups for that. But are there are there any other wide receivers in this class that just tell us who is gonna have a historic wide receiver season during the rookie season this year? Yeah?

01:07:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, no pressure. Actually, I'll say this on this show because it's funny. I saw the Yahoo Fantasy account just tweeted out a clip from one of my most recent podcasts, and when I was talking up Malik Washington saying like, is Malik Washington the next Pooka akup? And I literally quote you, he was like, no, probably not, But I like the player, so low expectations from my own company. I do appreciate that. Very realistic there. Yeah, I was gonna ask you why you didn't clip the bro. I mean we're supposed to be friends, Like, why didn't you clip the pooka and send that out for me? But I guess if we butchered it, like we're kind of trying to pronounce his name, maybe it didn't look that good for us.

01:08:22
Speaker 1: I think it was like a nacau or something like that instead of the nakua. But but yeah, I mean you you brought him up, man, you did it.

01:08:28
Speaker 2: I wish I had ended up ranking him higher to be honest, because yeah, his profile was awesome. But anyways, this year, I do think the Leak Washington is a guy I really like. I think Wando Robinson went in the second round and Leake Washington is way better in terms of the like small slot receiver ARC type. So he's an ame I'd mentioned. I think there are bigger Javon Baker Truthers than me, but I do think he's an interesting player, like a downfield guy. Uh, he's definitely one. But the one I've really been gravitated too of late is Jermaine Burton. Maybe not the the cleanest off field profile, there's some stuff there. You can go research that yourself, but he's really good. He gets open. He's so explosive downfield, like as as working on him the other night, and just number one of the success rates are gonna be crazy high that that number one. Number two, Like you remember how much people lost their mind about Jamison Williams, like out running an entire an entire defense, right like just blown by everybody. Jermaine Burton does that stuff too, man Like, he can absolutely fly and he shows you real like pacing and timing and tempo within his routes. Again, it's just there's off field concerns, dude. You even see it on the film, where like he has gotta be one of the highest in terms of like throwing a fit when he's open. But but but no, you didn't get the uh. He's very high on that spectrum, which I normally I'm not bothered by. I'm normally pro receiver, but sometimes I'm like, all right, buddy, your quarterback's kind of a fullback, So what are we doing here? Anyways, Overall, he's somebody that in your rookie drafts, like could end up being a guy that goes late. But if we're comparing him to the guy talking about last year in Puka, when like everybody knew Puko is like a hard worker and like dedicated to this old stuff, you know, there's obviously just off field concerns with Jamaine Burton. But the film is really really good.

01:10:30
Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, Burton's been the guy that I've been bringing up on shows that I'm going on because his analytical profile is really really intriguing, and it's so strange to me that there's not enough talk about the player himself, like like remove like the off the field stuff seems to be a very very real concern. So anyone listening to this, if you're watching the draft and Day two rolls around and he doesn't get drafted, it's almost definitely because of the off the field stuff if he doesn't go Day two, right, But when you're just strictly talking about him as a player, you have a player who his sophomore year at Georgia before he transferred to Alabama, he was second on that team and receiving and that was a team that had Brock Bowers, Lad McConkey, Ady Mitchell, and had George Pickens was banged up so he didn't really play that year, but Darnell Washington's on that team. You have a bunch of pro caliber running backs on that team, and he was second on that team in receiving yards. He goes to Alabama, and I have this sort of like feely subjective take on transferring, and that's you know a guy that Javon Baker, for instance, Baker goes from Alabama to UCF right after not really getting that much work at Alabama. Well, you're going from a superior program to a more inferior one. You're gonna face better, easier competition, you're not gonna have the same You're not playing with Devonte Smith and Jamison Williams anymore, and so it's not gonna be surprising if you see those numbers just skyrocket and get better. Right, But if you go from like a small program to a bigger program, or a comparable program to a comparable program, it's very easy to understand why a guy might not see a big uptick or even maintain his production. Right, Like I keep saying this, but like think about if you if you Matt transferred colleges or something, and like things would be different and you might not necessarily have it all together that first year that you're there, and you might then just need a little time to get acclimated, and then once you get acclimated, things look a lot better. And that's sort of what you see with Jermaine Burton's profile where he first gets to Alabama. Junior season not like amazing, but his senior season was really really solid. And it's so strange that even in the fantasy space, you get a guy who went to Georgia and Alabama and people don't even really care, like it's it's it's just strange to me that he's just not getting more hype, and maybe that's just all because of the off the field stuff, but at the same time, uh, it just feels like he's he's a very very strong prospect. Did you have a comp for him by chance? Like, was there a player that popped in mind? Or I mean, you know, you don't have to come up with one on the spot. How about I'll do this or do you want.

01:12:56
Speaker 2: To go ahead?

01:12:58
Speaker 1: Yeah? You go? Okay? So I asked Matt Waller in this and uh, and he this is the guy that he came up with the comp. He told me the comp and it was one of the comps in the pro in the in the model, and that's Robert Woods, guy who can kind of play everywhere, can get deep. I will say though that analytically, I do think that there's a little bit more verticality that to Jermaine Burton's game than maybe a Robert Woods.

01:13:21
Speaker 2: That's where I was gonna like kind of push back on that was the verticality and the player I was gonna say it was John Brown, a guy that I think can play. He could play inside, he could play outside. But in addition to being a legit deep threat, I also think that there was I mean, longtime reception perception subscribers know that I loved John Brown. I was a big John Brown player, So this is this is a compliment when I say John Brown. There was way more like separation and route running and full field ability to John Brown's game, and that really we actually saw best displayed with the pre Stefan Diggs. Josh Allen like that was really I think we had his best season is kind of the true number one wide on that team from a perimeter perspective. They obviously had Cole Beasley too, but yeah, I don't know. I think that was kind of the comp that stood out to me. He's just like, man, he's really fast. Like normally, I don't come away from film being like, man, that guy is fast. Like, to be honest with you, I have more impressed with his speed than I am with Zaviy Worthy sometime, which is saying something just because like Xavir Worthy runs a four to two to one and he's obviously fast. So I don't know. Jermaine Burton's definitely a guy that, like, I'm with you where I've been kind of confused as to why more people aren't jazzed up about him, but uh yeah, he's there's obviously off field stuff.

01:14:34
Speaker 1: Great stuff, Matt, as always, thank you for joining. We talked a while about this class, but it was a genuine pleasure. Thank you so much. For anyone not following Matt and his work, make sure to check him out on Twitter at Matt harmon underscore b YB. You can see what he's doing over on Yahoo and also Reception Perception. That's Reception Perception dot com. I'm on Twitter at late Round QB. All my stuff for over on Lateround dot com, including the Prospect Guide, which is currently sales, so check that out. Thanks for listening everyone, I've got a Mailbag episode for you later this week. I'll talk to you then