2025 NFL Combine Stock Watch: Wide Receivers

I’m going to have a lot fewer takeaways from the NFL Combine for the WR position than I did for RBs or TEs. That’s mostly because athleticism tells us a lot less about WR prospects than it does other positions. Only the (size-adjusted) 40-yard dash has a particularly notable correlation to production, and even that will be massively over-priced-in by the NFL when we find out how early these players get drafted.

Teams so heavily overvalue speed and athleticism at the WR position — to the detriment of more important traits (route-running, separation ability, etc.) — that within each day of the NFL draft, there’s actually a negative correlation between athleticism and early-career production. I spent plenty of words on this phenomenon (Berkson’s paradox) and the questionable value of WR athleticism in last week’s article.

With all of these disclaimers, today’s article will be more of a quick thinkpiece on a select few WRs for whom I believe the Combine could matter, viewed through the lens of our SPORQ composite athleticism model. All SPORQ scores can be referenced here.

Winners

Matthew Golden, WR, Texas

SPORQ Percentile: 99.0

Objectively, Matthew Golden is a “winner” coming out of the Combine. He ran the 12th-fastest 40-yard dash in the SPORQ database’s history (back to the year 2000), becoming just the 2nd WR to run a sub-4.30 while weighing above 190 pounds. This resulted in the 11th-best overall SPORQ rating ever at the position, making him a near lock to be drafted in Round 1 this April.

Whether that implies great things about Golden’s NFL career is a separate, more complicated question. Hyper-athletic WRs drafted in Round 1 have an insanely wide range of outcomes, with most either putting together Hall of Fame-level careers or failing to ever reach 1,000 receiving yards in a season — with very few in between the two extremes.

On one hand, this isn’t a clear-cut case of the NFL overvaluing raw athleticism. Per NFL Mock Draft Database, Golden was already widely expected to be a Round 1 pick well before he ran at the Combine (though one could argue that already reflected expectations he’d run incredibly fast).

But on the other hand, the rest of Golden’s prospect profile doesn’t exactly scream “Hall of Famer” — he averaged just 1.85 YPRR across his college career and worse overall production than a litany of recent Round 1 busts, a concerning note even if we cut him a ton of slack for playing with Quinn Ewers.

Ultimately, I lean more toward Golden being of the “better in real life” archetype, and will likely prefer to select RBs and TEs over him at his cost in dynasty rookie drafts. But I’ll admit this is a high-variance profile on which I’m a bit scared to stake out a strong position.

Jaylin Noel, WR, Iowa State

SPORQ Percentile: 96.1

To avoid repetition, I’ll first give Noel his flowers. Fantasy Points prospecting genius Brett Whitefield loves him and his tape. Noel’s 41.5-inch vertical jump ranks in the 97th percentile among all SPORQ-eligible WRs since 2000, and only four other WRs have reached that mark since 2012 who measure below six feet tall.^[1] (I mention height because the vertical specifically matters a bit more than the broad jump for shorter WRs.) This alongside Noel’s sub-4.40 40-yard dash and 75th-percentile weight-adjusted 3-cone ultimately landed him in the 96th percentile by SPORQ.

The only problem is that aside from Brett loving him (and I definitely don’t want to undersell that), none of what I just said above is particularly predictive of fantasy success — even if this Combine performance solidifies his Day 2 draft capital.

I’ll gladly admit that most of this list looks nothing like Noel stylistically, outside of the SPORQ range he happens to fall into. Most of the above were physically big and particularly raw athletes who lacked multiple productive seasons at a major conference program or who failed to get on the field much at all until later in their college careers.

In contrast, Noel is the rare hyper-athletic slot technician who somewhat impressively averaged over 2.00 career YPRR despite playing a full-time role starting in his freshman season. No Power Conference WR on the list above aside from Rondale Moore ever hit the 85.3 receiving YPG Noel did in his final season, a feat he accomplished while sharing the field with fellow projected Day 2 pick Jayden Higgins. But even the Moore comparison doesn’t work — Noel is significantly bigger and saw almost none of his production on screens, while Moore’s best-season YPG average falls to just 76.9 (well below Noel’s) with screens removed.

Noel is an intriguing prospect to me because he’s so glaringly unlike the typical hyper-athletic WR who sees his draft stock soar after the Combine. He is an amazing athlete, but he also has a relatively interesting analytical profile that we could close our eyes and imagine looking incredible if not for his target competition. If his Combine moves him from a top-100 pick to a top-50 pick in the NFL’s eyes, I won’t complain.

Luther Burden III, WR, Missouri

SPORQ Percentile: 92.5

On a purely statistical surface level, Burden’s sophomore season is perhaps the most impressive by any WR in this class, leading all Power Conference WR seasons in YPTPA (3.21) at just 19 years old. Fantasy Points CEO Scott Barrett and I are not alone in this assessment.

But beyond the surface level, Burden’s production profile has some potentially “fraudulent” factors. Most relevant for our purposes is how much his production has relied on screens.

While they don’t tell us much about a WR’s ability to run routes or get open against NFL CBs, screen targets in college can at least be a signal a player’s team wants to get him the ball and give him chances to make explosive plays after the catch. But that only helps us if the player is dynamic and athletic enough to command the same type of usage in the NFL.

Had Burden not been hyper-athletic, this red flag would have turned into a burning hole in his profile to me; a mediocre-to-bad SPORQ rating would have put him firmly on the Wan’Dale Robinson (36th percentile) or Treylon Burks (56th percentile) spectrum for me. But his 4.41-second 40-yard dash makes it easier to imagine him winning this way in the pros, a la D.J. Moore (85th percentile) or — I’m sorry — Deebo Samuel (71st percentile).

To be clear, none of this guarantees that Burden’s overall skillset will translate, and screens alone won’t make him a fantasy football contributor. But I’d still chalk this up as a win for now.

Losers

Tez Johnson, WR, Oregon

SPORQ Percentile: 20.8

While a lack of speed and athleticism isn’t a death knell for a WR, weighing just 154 pounds (the 2nd-lightest of any SPORQ-qualifying WR in my database since 2000) absolutely is. Our model harshly penalizes WRs who come in below a 24.0 BMI, for reasons that become obvious when you look at the group’s history.

Though I’m aware the NFL is changing and skill position players are getting smaller and faster, it’s pretty difficult to see the above list and remain interested in any prospects on it who didn’t either win the Heisman or get selected in the top half of Round 1 by the NFL. Neither applies to Tez Johnson (nor to Ja’Corey Brooks, LaJohntay Webster, or Jacolby George), so I’m fine with just taking him off my board, as I now expect him to fall to Day 3 like his former teammate Troy Franklin.