Projecting the top wide receivers in the 2019 NFL draft
Projecting the top wide receivers in the 2019 NFL draft
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As NFL offenses become increasingly focused on the pass, the demand for young, talented wide receivers can only go up. Unfortunately for teams interested in pass-catchers this year, Scouts Inc. ranks only three wide receivers within its top 32 and does not place a single wide receiver in its top 10. Playmaker Score, which is Football Outsiders' statistical system for projecting college wide receivers to the next level, has a similar read on this year's class, even as it disagrees with traditional scouting on particular players.
According to Playmaker Score, this year's top wide receiver prospects are mediocre for top prospects, but there are also several wide receiver prospects from relatively low-profile schools who could be good additions in the second, third and fourth rounds.
Playmaker Score is based on a statistical analysis of all Division I wide receivers drafted from 1996 to 2016. Its primary output projects the average number of regular-season receiving yards that the wide receiver will gain per year over the course of his first five NFL seasons. For more on how this is calculated, click here for the methodology.
Below, we take a look at some of Playmaker's top prospects in the 2019 NFL draft, along with some similar prospects from previous drafts. Our similar historical prospects are based on former players who were similar in their Playmaker statistics, so you might see us compare two physically dissimilar players because they were similar statistically.
Note: Players are listed in order of their projected average receiving yardage.
Scouts Inc.: No. 13 overall Similar historical prospects: Justin Blackmon, Allen Robinson
Brown is a good prospect, but the fact that he is this year's best speaks volumes about the mediocrity at the top of this wide receiver draft class. According to Playmaker, Brown is the weakest "top prospect" in the past five years. Every draft since 2013 has had at least one wide receiver prospect that scores higher than Brown.
That said, because most drafts have more than one successful receiver, it's not necessarily a knock on Brown that he is the best of a relatively uninspiring class. Brown earns points for entering the draft as an underclassman, for accounting for a large share of the passing yardage in Oklahoma, and for averaging over 18 yards per reception. Brown's weakest point is his relative lack of touchdowns. Brown scored on 2.5 percent of Oklahoma's passes as a junior. That's not exactly a bad rate, but it is a bit lower than top wide receiver prospects in the past.
Brown is unusually light for a top wide receiver prospect, weighing only 166 pounds. Since 1996, the lightest wide receiver drafted in the first round was Tavon Austin, who weighed 174 pounds.
Brown also gets a small boost from his rushing attempts for the Sooners. Interestingly, his three career rushing attempts went for a total of zero yards.
Scouts Inc.: No. 40 overall Similar historical prospects: Kelvin Benjamin, Davante Adams Arcega-Whiteside, who is 6-foot-2 and 225 pounds, is a more prototypical NFL wide receiver than Brown. Although physically different, Arcega-Whiteside is fairly similar to Brown from a Playmaker perspective.
Arcega-Whiteside had four more receiving touchdowns than Brown as a junior, but he had a lower yards-per-team-attempt rate. As a result, the difference between the two players' Playmaker projections is almost entirely attributable to Arcega-Whiteside's lower rating from Scouts Inc. As a value proposition, a team that misses out on Brown might be wise to take a look at Arcega-Whiteside early in the second round.
Scouts Inc.: No. 32 overall Similar historical prospects:Calvin Ridley, Nelson Agholor At least from a statistical perspective, Brown is very similar to this year's top two in terms of yards and touchdowns per team attempt. However, Brown falls a little short of the other two because his touchdowns dropped from 11 in his sophomore season to six in his junior season.
Hakeem Butler would be Playmaker's favorite prospect in this year's draft if you removed the projected draft position factor. Butler is similar to the two Browns and Arcega-Whiteside on all Playmaker metrics but one: yards per team attempt. As a junior, Butler had the exact same yardage total as Brown (1,318), but the Cyclones passed only 363 times as opposed to the Sooners' 401. Butler's 3.63 yards per team attempt is the best of any underclassman wide receiver in this class.
You could actually make a contrarian case for selecting Butler over Marquise Brown. Both played in the Big 12, so they had relatively comparable competition. Brown had the benefit of catching passes from Kyler Murray, who is considered the best quarterback in this year's draft. Butler's situation was not quite as good. The quarterbacking at Iowa State was competent but also consisted of a rotating cast, which included 10 games from freshman Brock Purdy.
Butler also has good size at 6-foot-5 and 227 pounds and ran a 4.48-second 40-yard dash, which is by no means slow for his size.
D.K. Metcalf, Ole Miss Rebels: 489 yards per season
In what might be its most controversial projection, Playmaker rates Scouts Inc.'s No. 2 receiver, Metcalf, behind Butler, who might be a third-round selection. Notably, Playmaker gives Metcalf a sizable boost for his better Scouts Inc. ranking but still believes that Butler is slightly more likely to be the more productive wide receiver.
Playmaker expects that top prospects will have at least one strong season in college. Metcalf does not have that. He was not the most productive receiver on his team last year and recorded fewer than 700 yards in each of his two college seasons.
But a big reason Metcalf's numbers were so low is that he missed approximately half the season with an injury. Playmaker might underrate him as a result, but Playmaker is also right to be cautious of a player who had only half a good season. For example, former first-round pick DeVante Parker was dominant in his injury-shortened final college season, recording 885 yards in only six games. Playmaker was right not to simply assume that Parker would have continued his breakneck production, and Parker's NFL production has been more consistent with an 885-yard college wide receiver than a 1,770-yard one. Moreover, Metcalf's production was not nearly as impressive as Parker's six-game hot streak. Even if you doubled Metcalf's production, he would still have fewer receiving yards than this year's top three prospects.
What Metcalf has in his favor is athleticism. Metcalf had an amazing 4.33-second 40-yard dash while weighing more than 220 pounds. Unfortunately for Metcalf, the 40-yard dash is a much weaker indicator of success than college production. Playmaker does give Metcalf a slight bump for his (also very good) 40-inch vertical jump, which is a slightly stronger indicator of success than the 40-yard dash. Metcalf also gets a boost from coming out of college early; the record of success for underclassmen is good, and Metcalf is a redshirt sophomore.
Although teams should be careful before using a first-round pick on Metcalf, he is far from a doomed prospect. Ultimately, Metcalf produced very few statistics during his short career, so statistics should not be the only perspective that a smart team considers. However, interested general managers should scrutinize his tape closely and monitor whether Metcalf actually has the skills to be a successful wide receiver, because he could just as easily be the latest in a long list of failed "height-weight-speed" prospects at the wide receiver position.
Scouts Inc.: No. 63 overall Similar historical prospects: Percy Harvin, Randall Cobb If N'Keal Harry drops to the third round, he could be a solid selection for a team looking for an interesting wide receiver prospect. Harry's receiving production was not quite up to the top three, and he averaged only 13.6 yards per reception. However, he averaged one rushing attempt per game during his best receiving year (his sophomore season). Rushing attempts are positive indicators of NFL success for two reasons. First, they show that the player's coach thought so highly of the prospect's athleticism that he found unique ways to get the player the ball. Second, wide receiver rushing attempts are often an indicator of a gadgety, short-passing offense that suppresses the yards-per-reception numbers of otherwise explosive and talented receivers.
Scouts Inc.: No. 98 overall Similar historical prospects: Kendall Wright, Tyler Lockett Andy Isabella had better production this year than that of any other wide receiver invited to the combine, and the contest is not particularly close. Isabella had a whopping 1,698 receiving yards last season, more than 200 yards more than any other wide receiver invited to the combine. Isabella also had good touchdown numbers, had a solid yards-per-reception number and averaged almost one rushing attempt per game.
But he has one giant strike against him, and it's not that he comes from a small school; it's that he enters the draft as a senior. The track record of senior wide receivers is not good historically, and it has been even worse in recent years. Why? Almost all legitimate wide receiver prospects now enter the draft as underclassmen.
Overall, Isabella is probably an underrated prospect because NFL teams tend to overvalue quality of competition. Sometimes a small-school prospect is absurdly productive due to level of competition, but many times the small-school prospect is productive because he is actually a legitimate talent. Isabella might not do anything in the NFL, but the chance that he could be the next Antonio Brown more than justifies selecting him with a third- or fourth-round pick.
Scouts Inc.: No. 31 overall Similar historical prospects:Phillip Dorsett, Aaron Dobson Parris Campbell also enters the draft as a senior. Playmaker penalizes players who use their full eligibility, so Campbell had to really outproduce his more junior contemporaries to compete with them in Playmaker's metrics. However, he was actually less productive than the other highly ranked wide receiver prospects of this class. Campbell had only 1,063 receiving yards in his best season, despite playing in 14 games as a senior. Moreover, the Buckeyes attempted 561 passes this year, so his yardage numbers look even worse in context. Similarly, Campbell's 12 receiving touchdowns look good in absolute terms, but once you account for the number of passes the Buckeyes attempted in 2018, his touchdown numbers are worse than the likes of Marquise Brown and Arcega-Whiteside.
Moreover, unlike Metcalf, Campbell cannot claim that his stats were the product of limited action. Campbell played in more than 40 games during his college career and thus had plenty of opportunities to shine like a future NFL star should. As a junior, for instance, Campbell had only 40 receptions for 584 yards and three touchdowns. When given the opportunity, most future NFL star wide receivers dominated as juniors. Campbell's failure to do so is a major red flag.
The best argument for Campbell is that he was part of a talented wide receiver corps at Ohio State and that these skilled teammates siphoned pass attempts that would have been directed to Campbell in a less talented group. There might be some truth to that theory, but Campbell is so far behind the other prospects in his class that it seems doubtful he would have put up Isabella-like numbers on another team. There are limits to statistical analysis of NFL prospects to be sure, and Playmaker could very well be wrong about Campbell. However, he remains the most solid bet to bust of the highly rated wide receiver prospects in the 2019 draft. Methodology
Playmaker Score is based on a statistical analysis of all of the Division I wide receivers drafted in the years 1996-2016, and measures the following:
The wide receiver's projected draft position from ESPN's Scouts Inc.
The wide receiver prospect's best or "peak" season for receiving yards per team attempt (i.e., a wide receiver with 1,000 receiving yards whose team passed 400 times would score a 2.50)
The wide receiver prospect's peak season for receiving touchdowns per team attempt
The difference between the prospect's peak season for receiving touchdowns per team and the prospect's most recent season for receiving touchdowns per team attempt (this factor is simply 0 for a player whose peak season was his most recent season)
The wide receiver's vertical jump from pre-draft workouts
A variable that rewards players who enter the draft as underclassmen and punishes those who exhaust their college eligibility
The wide receiver's college career yards per reception
The wide receiver's rushing attempts per game during their peak season for receiving yards per team attempt
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Projecting the top wide receivers in the 2019 NFL draft
Marquise Brown, Oklahoma Sooners: 632 yards per season
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