Chargers Draft Thresholds: Tom Telesco has always coveted big-bodied wideouts

The majority of receivers drafted by Telesco have weighed over 210 pounds!

One of my favorite things to do around the draft each year is take a look back at the Chargers’ draft history under Tom Telesco and create “thresholds” to help paint a clearer picture on which prospects the team is most like to be interested in, especially when it comes to the positions where they’re most needy.

After spending hours upon hours writing down tedious bits of information from every player that’s been drafted under Telesco, I now have those loose thresholds for each position.

Today, we’re going to take a look at the wide receivers and use the thresholds to point out some players in this class that fit the mold of a Charger.

To start, here are all the wideouts drafted under Telesco with each one color-coordinated to the head coach at the time. Pink means they were drafted under Mike McCoy, purple is Anthony Lynn, and green is Brandon Staley.

The players coated in red — Tevin Reese and KJ Hill — have been taken out as I deem them to be pretty notable outliers. Reese is the lightest receiver by over 30 pounds and Hill is the only other receiver that weighs under 200. Add in his 4.60 40 at his size and it’s not hard to imagine the Chargers avoiding a similar player in the future.

Ignoring those players, we’ve come to have thresholds of 6’1 for height, 210 pounds for weight, 32.5 in the vertical, 10’1 in the broad, and 15 reps on the bench press. Oddly enough, almost none of the receivers drafted under Telesco performed agility drills so we unfortunately have an extremely small sample size that I simply chose to deem irrelevant.

So now let’s take a look at some players from this draft class who are perfect — or pretty dang close — to meeting these thresholds.

Right off the bat, Stanford’s Michael Wilson is a perfect fit across the board with impressive size and strength numbers. Ole Miss’ Jonathan Mingo also looks like an excellent fit with elite size and testing, as well. Mingo was smooth as silk in the gauntlet drill, just like former Rebel standout AJ Brown, which makes it easy to fall in love with his profile. Fortunately for the Chargers, he’s not likely to go on day one and might even have a chance to fall to the third round.

The bottom two on the list, Cedric Tillman of Tennesee and Joseph Ngata out of Clemson, are two more perfect fits. Both offer great size with respectable 40 times and decent explosion numbers. Tillman has more hype around him as of now so I’d expect he could go as high as day two but Ngata seemingly looks like a day three pick after an underwhelming collegiate career.

Now for the two receiver who meet each threshold aside from weight, we’ve got A.T. Perry from Wake Forrest and Rashee Rice out of SMU. Perry is lengthy and has been compared to current Patriots wideout Devante Parker. His 4.47 in the 40 is excellent for his build but his biggest red flags revolve around his lackluster ball skills and erratic hands.

Rice is the shortest receiver listed but he makes up for it by jumping out of the gym at the catch point. A 41-inch vertical is no joke and adding even more leaping ability to an offense with Mike Williams sounds pretty good, if you ask me.