WROPS identifies the most overrated wide receivers in the 2024 NFL Draft

The 2024 draft is stocked with great receiving prospects, and these are names to avoid.

WROPS projections had a rough year in 2023 — there are just no two ways about it. It wasn’t a complete washout for the receiver projections in last year’s crop of draft prospects, but Matt Landers is still on a practice squad, Antoine Green was okay for a late round rookie, and Jonathan Mingo, yeesh. Thank goodness for Dontayvion Wicks, who crushed every advanced metric as a rookie, and Kayshon Boutte, who crashed down draft boards and who appears to be bad.

Some of these players could still improve of course, and judging any NFL result after a single rookie year is foolish, but I’m not optimistic that looking back on the 2023 draft class will fill me with pride. Of course, we’re all about improvement and learning lessons here, and so over the offseason, I took a look at several factors to see if I need to alter the WROPS weighting. I did.

WROPS is a simple stat, made up of catch percentage and yards per catch, and it quickly became clear that my WROPS weighting was drastically overrating catch percentage. College football has changed quite dramatically over the past five seasons in two major ways. The first is that completion percentage has been creeping upward steadily (for a long long time), due to growth in QB-friendly offensive strategies. College offenses now take full advantage of the liberal downfield blocking rules and the wide hashes to generate easier throws than ever before.

The other big change comes from NIL and the transfer portal, with talent concentrated more densely than ever before. As we’ll get to later in QBOPS, the best quarterbacks now uniformly throw to the best receivers, which boosts the productivity of all involved, with USC, LSU, Washington, Florida State, Texas, and Michigan all likely to see multiple receivers drafted highly. I experimented with penalizing receivers for good QB play and rewarding those who suffered from bad QB play, but so far the results haven’t quite passed the smell test for me. You can still see them in Column Q if you want, and I include them in case they end up surprising me.

Catch percentage is still important, but there are so many factors outside of the receiver’s control that that it’s not the differentiator that it once was. I have altered that weighting, and explosiveness is now more heavily weighted than catch percentage. It’s important to have an acceptable minimum catch percentage, and I still weight it enough to cast doubt on the viability of players like Bub Means, but it’s not so severe as to crush Marvin Harrison. Crushing Marvin Harrison would be stupid. I myself have criticized many a ranking system for crushing people like Marvin Harrison and not bothering to change any calculations despite having crushed players of Harrison’s caliber. Let’s be reasonable.

Harrison, working with the lackluster Kyle McCord and playing against a very tough defensive schedule, caught just 57% of his targets, which is pretty low, but also makes sense in the context of Ohio State’s season. Moreover, Harrison did so much damage with his catches that it hardly matters, and the system sees him for the outstanding prospect that he is, a solid 38% better than average. That’s not the best in the class, but it’s certainly on the elite tier, and of course, we should weight scouting heavily as well. The purpose of QBOPS and QWOBA isn’t to say that Malik Nabers, who was 47% better than average, is definitively better than Harrison. The point is to create an additional data point to either raise questions about a prospect, or put those questions to rest. More than anything, the point is to answer the question, “if scouts love this guy so much, and he’s such a great athlete, why didn’t he produce?” Harrison produced extremely well. The scouts are correct here.

More importantly, the new weighting makes sense. While we still have some questions and some surprises in the spreadsheet, it now conforms more with the general accepted reality of how most scouts and analysts view most receivers. The top 25 overall in WROBA contains Brian Thomas, Xavier Legette, Rome Odunze, Malik Nabers, Roman Wilson, and Ja’Lynn Polk. Harrison is 28^th out of 331 ranked players, and is still easily elite. It passes the smell test.

You can see the 2023 WROPS and WROBA rankings here in their entirety (draftable prospects are color-coded green), and please check the glossary here for definitions. I’ve also included a Draft Sheet, where each metric is also color-coded red/yellow/green, and contains additional metrics for extra context, including a re-run of the 2022 WROBA rankings with the new weighting in place in Column H.

SOD is Strength of Defense Faced, and it uses SP+ and FEI as it’s underlying base. We also have RAS when available, and in past years I combined WROPS and RAS into a single number (WRAPS) intended to show production and athleticism in a single statistic. I’m not doing that this year for one major reason. Recent research has show that there is actually a negative correlation with RAS and NFL productivity outside of the first round. I like to think of it as the Chase Claypool rule.

The reason for this is selection bias, as the players who are great athletes and great technical wide receivers all get scooped up early. The athletes that fall tend to have flaws, but teams will still gamble on speed and agility. It’s tougher to gamble on a poor athlete (or even a medium athlete) who your scouts tell you is a great technician. RAS is useful information, but it’s probably more valuable on its own.

I’ve also included PFF grade and a few seasons worth of Yards per Route Run, as Scott Barrett has put together some nice research on its predictive value.

The Overrated WRs

This brings us to this year’s Overrated WROPS Receivers.

The last column on the Draft Sheet is the Consensus Board as of March 18^th, and there are quite a few players who stick out like sore thumbs. We may as well start with one of the players who served as primary inspiration for much of this rejiggering.

Keon Coleman – Florida State

Age – 21 (Age here is the oldest a player will be in 2024)
50 catches, 658 yards, 11 TDs, 13.2 Yards per Reception.
WROPS: .333/.434/.768., WROBA: 90; 2022 WROBA: 104, RAS: 8.08
Consensus: 35^th overall

One of the key misses from last year was Jayden Reed, the Packer slot receiver and former teammate of Coleman. Reed posted an atrocious .367/.382/.748 line and an 82 WROBA in 2022, when he and Coleman were the Spartans’ primary receiving threats. There’s no way to sugarcoat Reed’s statistical line from that season, though he was partially dragged by poor quarterback play from Payton Thorne and a hard schedule, an 82 is just bad. That said, there were good lessons to be learned from Reed.

The first was to look at the totality of his career, a lesson that should have been obvious from Dontayvion Wicks, who was excellent in 2021 but poor in 2022 due to a change of circumstances. Much the same can be said of Reed, who was much better in 2021 posting a .337/.574/.911 line, and a 107 WROBA. Thorne pushed down his catch percentage, but Reed showed everyone how dynamic he could be with the ball in his hands.

The other issue I had with Reed was not projecting a transition to slot. Reed played more than 80% of his snaps outside at Michigan State, but was obviously going to get kicked inside at the next level. Reed is not big enough to play with more physical corners outside in the NFL, but against slot corners, with the easier release from the inside position, his tools won the day.

Coleman posted similar production metrics in 2023 compared to Reed’s 2022 numbers, but the two could not be more dissimilar. Coleman is 6-3, 213 and will primarily remain an outside receiver at the next level. Scouts love Coleman’s physicality and body control, and so do I. He’s fun to watch! But the fact of the matter is that he’s a poor route-runner who leans on that physicality far too often. Coleman’s 1.74 yards per route run this season is horrific, and serves to highlight his biggest fundamental issue: getting open.

Coleman also cannot blame his schedule, which was far easier this season than it was last year at Michigan State, and while quarterback Jordan Travis had a lackluster, injury-plagued season, he was orders of magnitude better than Thorne. Colossal teammate Johnny Wilson did not struggle similarly, posting a WROBA 10% above average and a very good 2.61 yards per route run. Coleman’s issues are of his own making.

Aside from his impressive physicality, there is one more positive worth mentioning. Coleman did not run well at the combine, but during basic drills he posted the fastest speed of any receiver per Next Gen Stats, which can be more indicative of a player’s true “football speed.” Indeed, a very similar thing occurred the previous season with the outstanding Puka Nacua, who also underwhelmed in proper testing at the combine but set the pace for speed in drills.

That said, Nacua was drastically different from Coleman as an advanced route runner who posted an elite WROPS/WROBA combo in 2021 (.385/.617/.1.002, 130. 20^th overall). Nacua won as a technician with underrated athleticism. Coleman is just extremely raw.

Coleman is one of the three youngest receivers in the draft, and at the very least there is projectability there. If you can sharpen his route-running and teach more subtle use of his frame to create separation, he could be special, and I understand the allure. That said, this draft is loaded with physical receivers who do not have question marks. Correcting the route-running for a player who has been able to dominate physically can be difficult, and sometimes, impossible. Coleman is a reach in the second, as even with a high ceiling, no top prospect has a lower floor.

Malachi Corley – Western Kentucky

Age – 22
79 catches, 984 yards, 11 TDs, 12.5 Yards per Reception.
WROPS: .419/.411/.831, WROBA: 101; 2022 WROBA: 106, RAS: N/A
Consensus: 61st overall

You will probably hear Deebo Samuel mentioned when discussing Corley. Don’t fall for it. Honestly, don’t go chasing Deebo.

There are so many red flags, but let’s start with basic production. Over the last two seasons, Corley has been strictly average, posting a 101 WROBA in 2023 and a 106 in 2022. Corley has no RAS yet, but I’m not sure we need one to come to a fair evaluation, because the reason some scouts love him is YAC, and YAC is also his biggest weakness. Let me explain.

Corley is 9^th among all receivers with 50 targets or more in YAC, and almost all of that YAC is generated through simple bubble/smoke screens that get Corley in space. Once in space, his balance is exceptional, and he’s one of the best college tackle-breakers you’ll see.

So what’s the problem? I like to call this Ron Dayne’s Law.

The famous Wisconsin Heisman Trophy winner was big and fast for a college running back…but not for an NFL linebacker, and as a result Dayne’s physical style just didn’t translate to the NFL. Corley is likely to see similar issues, as no prospect on my draft sheet faced an easier schedule of defenses than Western Kentucky. Corley’s highlights are filled with him shrugging off 160-pound corners and housing simple screen passes. He’s a stoutish 5-11, 215, but at the next level, he will hardly be some sort of juggernaut, and Corley’s film is NOT filled with any other part of the route tree.

His ADOT was a class-low 5.5 yards, which just serves to highlight just how much of a gimmick player he was. Somewhat surprisingly, he was not a punt or kick returner in college, and so if you do go out and get him, you likely get something of a beefy Tyler Ervin with no fringe benefits or maybe in a best-case scenario, post-RB-transfer Ty Montgomery. He played in a fake offense and overwhelmed garbage competition, but even his overwhelming numbers are purely average. He sits at 61^st on consensus, and if you want a slot, or a whatever this is, you can wait for something better. Don’t just watch the highlights with Corley. They’re filthy liars.

Xavier Worthy – Texas

Age – 21
75 catches, 1014 yards, 5 TDs, 13.5 Yards per Reception.
WROPS: .372/.446/.818, WROBA: 101; 2022 WROBA: 81, RAS: 9.39
Consensus: 32nd overall

The Texas receivers are all quite tricky to parse because there are four good ones including tight end Ja’Tavion Sanders. Texas had an elite offense, with an elite quarterback and an equally elite running game, while also playing against an average schedule, and so we would expect elite production out of their receiving corps. Sanders and Adonai Mitchell were well above average with WROBAs of 120 and 116 respectively, and Jordan Whittington has your typical slot receiver issues, posting a 101 WROBA. That’s exactly the same as Worthy’s 101. For an outside receiver featuring Worthy’s pure speed, there’s no excuse to be merely average.

Worthy led the team in targets and was the most likely to draw a top corner, but man, for a guy who set the 40-yard dash record at the combine, he just was not explosive. A sub .600 WRSLG would be alarming, but a sub .500 seems inconceivable. Of the 331 TEs and WRs who qualified for a WROPS score, Worthy and his 4.2 speed finished 139^th in yards per completion. How is that even possible?

Part of the issue for Worthy is size, as he measured at 5-11, 165 pounds, in the bottom 1% of receivers for weight. It’s much easier to run fast when you don’t currently possess a real NFL body. Worthy will finish the year just 21 years old, and so he may very well fill out, but even if he does you’re betting on him keeping that all-world speed and improving drastically as a route runner. It doesn’t do Worthy any favors that he shared a field with the highly entertaining Adonai “AJ” Mitchell. AJ has a few problems in his statistical profile as well, but his build and athletic profile is even more impressive than Worthy’s, and he possesses a far more advanced bag of tricks to get open and escape would-be tacklers after the catch.

A recent study from Sumer Sports provided evidence that the 40 is the single most overrated drill for wide receivers in terms of predicting future production. It’s a nice parlor trick, but the Raiders have basically proven this point over time. The four most important factors are age, vertical, bench, and shuttle. Worthy is young, and his jumping drills were elite, but he didn’t run the agility drills and he did not hit the bench. Given his small size, his agility and ability to get off blocks will be paramount at the next level, especially if he is to spend any time in the slot.

If you do select Worthy, you’re betting on an incredible athlete growing into a bulkier frame. However, there’s a good argument that Worthy was actually the worst regular receiver on the Longhorns and that his speed, while nice, is serving to disguise several large deficiencies. He played 90% of his snaps out wide for Texas, and some time in the slot could either do him well or get him killed. The current consensus has him at the end of the first round, ahead of Roman Wilson, Troy Franklin, Ja’Lynn Polk, Tez Walker, and Xavier Legette. That is ridiculous. Ignore the 40, or suffer.