Seattle WR DK Metcalf was sensational again on Monday night, catching 10 passes for 177 yards in the Seahawks’ 23-17 win over the Philadelphia Eagles.
Metcalf is quickly proving to be one of the most unstoppable receivers in the league, and is making me once again wonder: How on Earth did he fall to the 64th pick in the 2019 NFL Draft?
Eight receivers were picked ahead of Metcalf, a 6’4″, 230-pound human being who ran a 4.33 40-yard-dash at the Draft Combine.
Our friends at Touchdown Wire have a list of all eight of the receivers taken ahead of Metcalf. The list will be painful reading for fans of the Patriots (who took N’Keal Harry ahead of Metcalf), the Eagles (JJ Arcega-Whiteside), the Colts (Parris Campbell), and the Cardinals (Andy Isabella).
Reading back at the draft analysis around Metcalf, who went viral for a photo of him at Ole Miss in which he appeared to be a crude superhero illustration, you’ll see there were real concerns about his football-playing ability, and then some idiotic concerns about his agility.
First: Regarding his football playing ability. These concerns about Metcalf make some sense. Great NFL receivers tend to dominate college opponents, and Metcalf had a strong but not otherworldly college career at Ole Miss, where he was predominantly a deep threat in a middling offense. He also suffered a neck injury that cut short his sophomore season, which made him a bit more difficult to scout.
When the Seahawks drafted him, Pete Carroll himself said they had to teach him how to play football. Due to injuries and the Ole Miss offense, there just wasn’t a large body of work showing that Metcalf could run a variety of routes. I’ll give teams and scouts hesitant about that a pass.
Then there was the agility stuff. DK Metcalf, who again is 6’4″ and 230 pounds and can run a 4.33 40-yard-dash, didn’t score too well in the shuttle run or the 3-cone drill at the NFL Combine. This led to real discussion about whether or not he was agile enough to play in the NFL.
This is peak silliness, especially when it comes to evaluating wide receivers. You want to evaluate linebackers on their ability to stop on a dime and recover in a different direction, fine, that happens during games. But NFL receivers need to make one quick move and explode. As long as Metcalf’s knees work and he can change directions and/or stop, he’s going to be able to run most NFL routes.
Metcalf was a bit of an unknown quantity coming into the NFL. But I’m hoping that his performance at the combine can help scouts and fans appreciate that not all the drills are totally applicable to being successful NFL players, and are sometimes not applicable at all.
Metcalf had a crummy shuttle run and crummy 3-cone drill time. I have no idea if that caused him to have eight receivers picked ahead of him, but if it did contribute to any team’s analysis of his draft stock, I hope they take a long, hard look at their analysis moving forward.
