Small School Receivers
Since this is a draft site, it would behoove me to talk about, you know, the NFL Draft. The first thing I would like to do is draw attention to an excellent little piece of work written by Edgar Thompson of the Palm Beach Post. In it, he details Bill Parcells' history with drafting receivers.
Personally, I agree with Edgar that there tends to be a certain size that is a commonality in most of these receiver picks. However, it has been brought up that this may either be anomalous, or simply due to receivers actually growing in stature during this 20+ year history of draft picks. Fair enough. One thing I will note, however, is that the list shows a very significant trend in picking receivers from small schools, including the FCS. Some of the schools listed for the receivers include Northwestern Oklahoma State, Hampton, Angelo State, Northern Iowa, Western Michigan, Louisianna-Monroe, Northwestern State-Louisianna, Utah State and Pacific.
Folks, that is 9 out of 20 receiver picks used on small school players from the 4th round onward. Just a cursory glance at our WR Rankings will show that small school prospects don't represent anywhere even close to 45 percent of draftable receivers, any given year.
Did Parcells draft all of those players? No, he only had final say authority in one draft during that time span. However, he doesn't really have final say authority over draft picks in Miami, either. Yet, there are no shortage of people assuming that whoever Miami drafts will be a "Parcells guy". For many of those drafts, Parcells worked closely with George Young, the General Manager of the Giants. He learned a great deal from Young's philosophies on personnel, including adherence to the infamous "planet theory," which in its original form simply guided for acquiring as many uber-athletic big men as possible. When Parcells went to New England, he did not necessarily have final say authority, and was infamously countermanded on several draft picks (see Glenn, Terry) however it is fairly safe to say that the personnel department tried their hardest to work with Parcells' player preferences. The same is true with the Jets, Cowboys, and now the Dolphins. All of these drafts are very likely to be tuned to a high degree into Bill Parcells' preference patterns. Therefore, I do consider the penchant for selecting small school receivers later in the draft to be a strong pattern that is likely to repeat in Miami (when they are actually interested in receivers).
How does this translate to the 2009 NFL Draft? There are a number of smaller school players that I would highlight as higher than normal likelihood for being drafted by the Dolphins, due to the small school trend. Interestingly enough, most featured well in the Texas vs. Nation All Star practices and game.
The first is the guy that actually blew up during the game. I'm talking about Abilene-Christian's own Johnny Knox. Knox played on an Abilene-Christian offense that set all kinds of records by scoring 52.3 points per game and racking up 558.8 yards per game. The offense mostly featured the dynamic Harlon Hill Award winning running back Bernard Scott, who is a subject for a different blog. However, Knox was the leading receiver on the team and caught 56 balls for 1,069 yards and 13 TDs in 2008. When I watch him play, I don't necessarily see a guy that has tremendous hip flexibility and the ability to be sudden and crisp in his routes, however he blew the doors off the Combine in February by running as low as a 4.29 on some stopwatches in the 40, jumping 35 inches vertically and 10'2" horizontally. He did this at 5' 11.5" and 185 pounds.
There are two strengths to his game that can make him a viable pro. One is obvious, when you have that kind of speed, corners are going to have to back off you and show you a lot of respect. A player that fast will get open for underneath routes even if he doesn't have the special start-stop/stop-start ability, hip flexibility and balance to get into and out of his breaks with elite quickness. Corners will give him cushion off the line, and they will generally open their hips early to respect his deep speed, which will give him the ability to catch the ball on out and hitch patterns. His speed is not just evident on a track, you can see it on the football field and his take-off from the line of scrimmage is about as fast as you'll see.
The other aspecrt of his game that will avail him in the pros is his hands and ability to concentrate on the football. During the Texas vs. Nation game, the athletic cornerback DeAngelo Willingham of Tennessee actually did a good job of covering Knox on a deep post. Again, Knox is not yet a sudden or explosive route seller, and with the cushion and respect he was seeing from corners and safeties, this was not surprising. Willingham was positioned in front of Knox and reached back at the ball, getting a good piece of it. Knox was able to keep concentration on the football despite the tip, come up with the ball, and keep running straight into the end zone. If that play were an isolated incident, it would not carry a whole lot of significance. However, Knox displayed a superior catch radius at Abilene-Christian as well as the All Star practices. He is a natural and smooth hands catcher that shows good concentration on and the ability to catch passes that are not perfectly targeted, including both the low ball and the high ball.
Another prospect that could tickle the Dolphins' fancy for small school athletes at the receiver position would be Dominique Edison of Stephen F. Austin. He is a lot bigger than Johnny Knox, at 6'2" and 204 pounds, however he is also a little slower, running a 4.43 at the NFL Combine. Interestingly enough, his agility and jump characteristics are about the same as Knox despite the larger size. Edison exploded in his final year at Stephen F Austin, going from 500+ yard, 4 TD kind of guy to a 1,000+ yard 18 TD guy. According to Chad Reuter of NFL Draft Scout, Edison was the most impressive receiver at the Texas vs. Nation Monday practice, before he dinged his shoulder and had to sit out some.
Right now, Edison has yet to prove to me that his catch radius is as strong as Knox, however something that does absolutely stand out about him is that he is great at looking the football into his hands, going after the ball at its highest point and securing the football in traffic. From a speed standpoint, his vertical speed is very evident on tape, at least at the FCS level of competition. He appears to be a legitimate 4.4 speedster. Where he has Knox, in addition to the size department, is the quickness and ability to cut. At mid-field, his route selection was not tremendous. He mostly ran post patterns and short patterns on the sidelines. However, in the red zone is where you see him run a lot trickier patterns with genuine quickness and change of direction skills. Not surprisingly, he caught 18 touchdowns with his deadly combination of size, speed and route quickness.
The most devastating route runner among small school receivers has to be Jarett Dillard of Rice. Dillard's story has really caught on over the last month or so. He is one half of the most prolific QB-WR touchdown combo in NCAA history, if I'm not mistaken (which I might be). Infamously, he is not the biggest or the fastest receiver out there. He has really taken that label and used it as a chip on his shoulder in order to train and get better to the point where, to be honest, showing up at the NFL Combine 5'10" and 191 pounds with a 4.54 in the 40, a 42.5 inch vertical and 10'9" broad jump (both either the best or tied for the best among receivers at the Combine), is not anything close to a sin. He has strong hands and can make a variety of catches, including over the shoulder. His quickness off the line of scrimmage, ability to avoid the jam and use his tremendous jumping skills and strong hands made him a favorite on fade routes in the end zone at Shrine Practices and during the game itself. Where Jarett Dillard will really catch your eye, though, is the ability to sink his hips and stay balanced in order to make his breaks crisp and explosive. The problem, for him, is he trained so hard on running a faster 40 he might actually be a faster vertical guy on the track than he really is on the football field, and corners are not going to give him the cushion that they would a Johnny Knox or Dominique Edison. On the other hand, Dillard's ability to get into and out of his breaks blows the other two away. His jump skills are also deadlier, though Edison's size might make up for it. Dillard, by the way, was pretty much the star receiver at East-West Shrine practices.
Another small school receiver to keep an eye on, that I know very little about, is Dudley Guice of Northwestern State-Louisiannna. He is 6'3" and 209 pounds, and blew up some great numbers at an impromptu workout held for just one NFL scout. He ran true 4.40 and 4.43 second times on FieldTurf, had a 39 inch vertical, 10'5" broad jump, 4.01 second shuttle and 6.62 second cone drills. He has 34 inch arms, a very nice reading for a receiver. The intriguing part here is that once Dominique Edison took an injury after the Texas vs. Nation Monday practice, Dudley Guice stepped up and became the most impressive receiver in the practices, according to NFL Draft Scout's Chad Reuter. He also caught a number of passes during the game, including a very nicely run deep out touchdown where he used his head and hips to flash inside and break outside, generating 5 yards of separation between he and cornerback DeAngelo Willingham. He really did a nice job turning his momentum upfield to cross the goal line as he was about to head out of bounds after the catch. He definitely had to have caught a few eyes, especially given his superior size and athleticism.
