Evaluation takeaways from the NFL's pre-draft process

We’re currently in the midst of NFL Draft season. The NFL Combine was a few weeks ago, pro days are ongoing and the draft itself is a month away. The NFL Draft provides a great opportunity to take a look back at the backgrounds who become top picks.

The draft serves as the best available quantifiable indicator of a player’s ability at the college level. Study of players’ developmental paths can prove instructive in improving our process for evaluating high school prospects. We’re fully leaning into this area at On3 with some amazing products and tons of data to dig into in the near future.

We’ll be able to have a more comprehensive snapshot of positional commonalities after the draft. With that said, here are some storylines we’ve noticed to this point in the pre-draft process.

Big frames add speed

Many of the prospects who made big jumps in athleticism from high school to the pre-draft process have large, long frames.

Georgia defensive lineman Travon Walker has seen his draft stock skyrocket since the end of the season. Unlike most of the others in this group, Walker was a five-star prospect in the 2019 cycle. That ranking was due in large part to his elite frame and physical upside. Going into his senior season at Upson-Lee High in Thomaston, Georgia, Walker was 6-foot-5, 263 pounds with a 4.94 second 40-yard dash, 4.54 shuttle and 28.1 inch vertical. By the time the All-American Bowl rolled around in January, Walker was up to 6-foot-5, 283 pounds and checked in with 35-inch arms. Fast forward three years later and he’s one of the top athletes in the draft. Walker blew up the Combine, running a 4.51 second 40-yard dash (1.62 10-yard split) at 6-foot-5, 275 pounds. He also turned in a 6.89 second 3-cone and 4.32 second shuttle.

Few have raised their stock more than Virginia tight end Jelani Woods. He signed with Oklahoma State as a quarterback out of Ellenwood (Ga.) Cedar Grove and was eventually moved to the “Cowboy Back” position (h-back/blocking tight end) while in Stillwater. Woods transferred to Virginia to get more pass catching opportunities. Coming out of high school, he was 6-foot-7, 230 pounds with a 5.00 second 40-yard dash, a 4.41 second shuttle, and a 29.6 inch vertical. The improvement over the past several years is substantial. Woods now stands over 6-foot-7, 252 pounds. He ran a 4.61 second 40 at the Combine and had 24 reps on the bench press with 34 1/8 inch arms. His elite athleticism took full shape at his pro day this week with a 4.20 second shuttle, 37.5 inch vertical and 10’9″ broad jump. Accounting for size, Woods is one of the more athletic tight ends prospects in recent memory.

Virginia Tech EDGE Amare Barno was a gangly safety and wide receiver at Blythewood (S.C.) Westwood. He grew into a 6-foot-5, 220 pound linebacker at Butler Community College before ultimately settling in as a pass rusher at Virginia Tech. At the Combine, Barno ran a 4.36 second 40-yard dash at 6-foot-5, 246 pounds, breaking the record for fastest 40 by a defensive lineman or defensive end.

UTSA’s Tariq Woolen was the biggest corner at the Combine, checking in at 6-foot-4, 205 pounds with 33 5/8 inch arms. His 40 came in at 4.26 seconds, which ties for fourth-best in Combine history. Woolen also had the best vertical of all defensive backs with a 42 inch leap. Unlike many of the others in this group, Woolen ran track in high school – he finished second in his district in the 200 meters and consistently ran sub 22 second times. With that said, Woolen has gotten faster over the past several years. It carries over to the field, where he was the fastest player at the Senior Bowl.

Speed was the main question for Cincinnati corner Sauce Gardner entering the Combine. Gardner was 6-foot-2, 159 pounds and ran a 4.74 second 40-yard dash prior to his senior season of high school. He showed up to Indianapolis at 6-foot-3, 190 pounds with a 33.5 inch arm and ran a 4.41 second 40-yard dash.

So what’s the takeaway here? It seems as though many of the prospects who make the biggest athletic strides in college enter as taller, longer prospects coming out of high school. Walker and Woods were multi-sport athletes who spent a bunch of time on the basketball court in high school. It’s likely they didn’t make big strides in the weight room until getting to college. Barno and Gardner added a bunch of weight to their big frames (around 30 pounds each) while in college, becoming much stronger and more explosive. Woolen went from a fast prospect to one of the fastest in recent memory.

Top track times remain predictive

High school track times are still one of best ways to forecast how well a player will run in the pre-draft process.

Baylor cornerback Kalon Barnes entered the Combine as the favorite to run the fastest time. Barnes was a track star at Silsbee High in Texas and ran a crazy 10.04 second (wind-aided) 100 meter time in the state finals as a senior. Barnes took advantage of the fast track in Indianapolis and ran a 4.23 – the second fastest time ever behind John Ross’ 4.22.

Draft pundits predicted that Kyler Gordon would test as more athletic than fellow Washington corner Trent McDuffie. They should’ve checked the high school track profiles for each. McDuffie had a personal best mark of 10.82 seconds in the 100 meters as a high school senior, in addition to a 23-8 foot long jump as a junior. Gordon’s best 100 meter time in high school was 11.22. Guess who ran faster? It was McDuffie – he ran a 4.44 second 40 while Gordon turned in a relatively disappointing 4.52 at the same weight.

Best Texas athletes not from top HS programs

The state of Texas is filled with big high school football programs that are well-funded and expertly coached. Players from these programs can be developed at a quicker rate due to the training resources available. These prospects also can benefit from annual college coach foot traffic during evaluation periods and media coverage.

I found it interesting that many of the top athletes in this draft cycle from Texas were not from some of those aforementioned high school programs.

Sam Houston State’s Zyon McCollum is perhaps the best example. McCollum was the most athletic defensive back at the Combine, posting a top three mark in every test. The highlights include a 4.33 second 40-yard dash, 3.94 second shuttle and 6.48 second 3-cone. McCollum played at Galveston Ball High, the alma mater of another diamond in the rough prospect – Mike Evans. McCollum was already a top athlete in high school – he clocked a 4.40 40-yard dash and a 4.03 shuttle at Sam Houston State’s prospect camp. It’s likely he just didn’t benefit from the recruiting attention at Ball like some do at other programs.

Beware of the heavy receiver

Arkansas’ Treylon Burks was talked about as a contender to be the first wide receiver off the board heading into the Combine. Burks was one of the SEC’s best at Arkansas. He’s a bigger receiver who played at around 6-foot-2, 235-240 pounds in college. Burks cut his weight down to 225 going into the Combine, but was towards the bottom of the wide receiver group in nearly every test (4.55 second 40-yard dash, 33 inch vertical jump, 10’2″ broad jump and 7.28 second 3-cone). He was drawing Deebo Samuel comparisons, but looks much closer to a bigger Laviska Shenault.

Seeing Burks disappoint at the Combine reminded me of some recent trends we’ve seen with highly-drafted receivers. Just one wide receiver picked in the last seven NFL Drafts was over 220 pounds in high school. That was Jalen Hurd, a former running back who moved to receiver late in his college career. Burks was listed at 225 pounds coming out of Warren (Ark.) High in the 2019 cycle.

Burks will certainly buck that trend and still be a high draft pick with the chance of becoming a good pro. But it was not surprising to see him fail to meet lofty expectations in the Combine setting and have his stock drop a bit.

Jordan Davis was a great evaluation by Georgia

Jordan Davis was a polarizing high school prospect coming out of Charlotte’s Mallard Creek in the 2018 cycle. Though not lowly-rated at No. 399 in the On3 Consensus, Davis did not check in as a top 250 prospect in any rankings set. Some Power Five coaches in the region were skeptical and didn’t view him as a top prospect or even a take in some cases. Georgia defensive line coach Tray Scott believed in Davis and made what turned out to be a great evaluation.

We saw what Davis did at the Combine and in spurts over his career at Georgia. He’s likely to be a first-round pick and could go inside the top 15. Davis certainly saw improvements over his time at Georgia and in pre-draft training. With that said, we’ve heard his freshman testing numbers at Georgia bordered on freaky and were that of a prospect who should’ve been ranked much, much higher.

Quarterbacks who can run

Much has been made about what appears to be a very weak draft at quarterback. There is no bona fide top five type pick, though we could see a needy team reach for a signal caller.

We’re still likely to see four to five quarterbacks go in the first three rounds. The consensus top five quarterbacks appear to be Malik Willis (Liberty), Matt Corral (Ole Miss), Kenny Pickett (Pitt), Desmond Ridder (Cincinnati) and Sam Howell (North Carolina).

Howell is the only quarterback of the group who was three-and-out as a member of the 2019 high school class. The rest stayed in college for four or five years. Howell and Corral were both blue-chip prospects, while the other three were three-stars.

Rushing ability at the high school level can be indicative of functional athleticism and playmaking skills. Poor rushing output has also proven to be predictive of some top picks who had trouble with mobility once hitting the NFL.

High school rushing production is one of the more common threads among this group of quarterbacks. Willis (1,033 yards, 10 touchdowns), Ridder (915 yards, 18 touchdowns) and Howell (1,392, 17 touchdowns) all carried significant rushing loads for their high school programs as seniors. Kenny Pickett also ran for double-digit touchdowns as a senior (472 yards, 11 touchdowns). So that’s four of the top five quarterbacks who ran for at least 10 touchdowns as a senior in high school.

Corral only ran for 124 yards and three scores after transferring to Long Beach Poly for his senior season, but it’s not as though he didn’t or couldn’t run the ball in high school. He ran for a combined 760 yards and 12 touchdowns in his sophomore and junior seasons at Thousand Oaks (Calif.) Oaks Christian. Of course, we saw Corral’s rushing ability on display this year at Ole Miss, grinding out 614 yards for the Rebels.

First-round quarterbacks from the last seven drafts averaged 680 rushing yards as high school seniors. This group averaged 787 yards as seniors.