Following the NFL draft each season, the natural thing to do is to try and predict and project the roles of the newly selected players on each team. Who will start? Who will contribute? Who will surprise?
Something fun is to try and figure out who the underrated players from each draft class is. Who are sleeper picks that could outperform their draft status?
Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar picked the sleeper of every team’s draft class. For the Arizona Cardinals, he believes it will be receiver Tejhaun Palmer, the Cardinals’ sixth-round pick out of UAB.
The Cardinals came into the 2024 draft with very little to speak of at receiver, and general manager Monti Ossenfort did his level best to solve that issue with the selection of Marvin Harrison Jr. at forth overall. Harrison reminds me of Larry Fitzgerald, another highly-drafted Cardinals receiver, so what’s not to like?
And then, with the 191st overall pick in the sixth round, Ossenfort and his staff pulled off a deep cut with the addition of UAB’s Tejhaun Palmer. Now, Roddy White came out of UAB, so NFL success at the position is not unusual, and Palmer has some serious size/speed stuff to deal with. At 6-foot-2 and 210 pounds, Palmer caught eight passes of 20 or more air yards on 14 targets for 264 yards and two touchdowns. Palmer may still be putting the finer points of his game together, but his tape yells pretty loudly.
“The guy has got upside, he’s got size and he’s got speed,” Cardinals Assistant GM Dave Sears said of Palmer. “We feel like we can develop his routes. The kid’s a tough kid, loves ball — those kinds of things. We definitely feel like there’s some upside we can develop with him. Our coaches, he was down at the East-West Game with them and they saw that first-hand down there too.”
Overhead camera guys needed to up their game when covering UAB (and now Cardinals) receiver Tejhaun Palmer's size/speed combo. Opposing cornerbacks didn't fare much better. pic.twitter.com/t9bHLzcOHe
— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) April 28, 2024
He will have the opportunity to earn playing time. After Harrison, the depth chart includes second-year pro Michael Wilson, Greg Dortch, Zach Pascal and Chris Moore. Only Pascal has reached 600 yards in a season in his career and he has had a combined 19 receptions the last two seasons.
Palmer gives them size and speed. We will see if he can make the adjustment to the pros and produce in an offense that was in the top 10 in many metrics down the stretch despite having almost no one producing at receiver,
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