Exactly.

When people like Daniel Jeremiah and Matt Miller are mocking him to the Chiefs in the 1st, it’s a legitimate possibility.
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I think any anger about any of it is irrational.

It's all speculation, and none of us are qualified NFL scouts, or GM's, we're all just armchair warriors (maybe sitting in our underwear to stick with DJ's mantra) that are more than casual fans, but definitely not qualified to pick NFL players in the draft.

I don't think I'd take Watson in the first, because I think I could get Pierce in the second for sure, and I think he's a higher floor kid although perhaps not as potentially high a ceiling. But he's close, and he's the same skillset more or less.

but if Veach does, I won't complain until I see the product on the field. But I think DJ might blow a gasket and kill a puppy or something.
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Ah - so you mean YOUR hyperbole.

It isn't. I'm saying Walker is a more fair comp for his upside than someone like Randy freakin' Moss where we have guys saying he has 'generational talent' upside.

Show your work, sport.

And again - the hyperbole here is just ALL you. I didn't compare him to McCluster the player. At all. I compared 'well since we have 2 picks in the first I'd take him' as a process to 'well this is the 'found' second we got for Tony G so we can gamble' as a similar thought process that yields bad outcomes.

Moreover, I didn't say I'd draft him at 62, only that I'd consider him. Meanwhile you'd consider him at 30. That's a full round's difference and yes, that's absolutely significant.

Again - one of us is very much guilty of overplaying his hand - sure.

It just isn't me.
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Yeah, I'm not one to hold my fire.

But I'm also not one to hit and run.

If I don't like a guy, I'll tell you why. And hell, if I come around on a guy as the process goes along, I'll gladly admit to that as well. I've come around on the DTs at the back of the first in a big way throughout this process. I've stated as such (and why) several times.

But this idea that I have some irrational hatred of Watson because of 'reasons' is silly. I've gone pretty far down the rabbit hole there.

Small school guys with elite measurables who are actual dominant football players WILL dominate at that level because their coaches feed them the football. This guys coaches did not do that. There's a reason for that and as has already been conceded - no, we don't know more than the Chiefs do about these guys. But we also don't know more about them than their college coaches. And frankly, the CHIEFS don't know more about them than their college coaches.

And that cuts both ways. Despite knowing more about this stuff than we do, the Chiefs occasionally just get it flat-ass wrong. And perhaps Watson's coaching staff got it wrong with him as well.

Do I want to use a top 50 pick on that gamble? Nope. Do not.
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That makes sense.

I'm just saying, Walker had 3500 yards and 30 TD's in his first 4 full years in the league, including a rookie season where he only had 1 TD and started only 2 games.

Years 2-5, he missed basically one entire season to injury but otherwise compiled 3000 yards and 29 TD's in 3 seasons.

If ANYBODY in the draft can give us that, I'm taking them.
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Yeah - he was a great player. With similar measurables to Watson who produced at a similar clip with a much higher level of competition.

But he's on the skinny end of Watson's bell curve of potential outcomes, IMO. That's not the middle 50% for him at all. I would put it maybe at the top 15% of possible outcomes. I wouldn't even put this 'generational talent' stuff as 1% likely.
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Here's the thing, though:

You keep knocking Watson's production, and I get it. But the context of the situation is thus:

Over the past 10 seasons:

NDSU has run the ball 6,499 times for 39,968 yards. They have thrown the ball 3,068 times for 25,629 yards.

That's a 68 percent run rate. They average almost 6 yards a pop over that span, so you see why they stick with it.

Looking back, starting in 2014, you start seeing a slight decrease in the number of times they throw the ball. From 36% in 2012-13 to 27% this past year. They WERE a run-heavy scheme to start and have skewed even more strongly in that direction.

This isn't about Watson not dominating or the coaches not trusting him. It's about an absolute powerhouse with a clear, long-standing, and absolutely successful system sticking with that system regardless of personnel.

If the Bison had thrown the ball at the same rate in 2021 as they did at the start of this period (36%) and succeeded at the same rate, you'd roughly expect Watson's numbers to be in the 1200 yard, 11-12 TD range.

And shoot, running the same exercise and using, say, the run-pass balance of Ohio State against it... that's 54 percent passes. You're looking at 1600 yards and 14 TDs.

I think Watson's production is a red herring when it comes to evaluating him. Lot of words for me to get to that thesis, but there it is.
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And Georgia Tech ran the triple option.

But when they had Calvin Johnson, they got him the ball. Damaryius Thomas went for 1,200 a few years later.

If you have a great player, you use him, regardless of what your 'system' is. NDSU just flat didn't. And that's at a level of competition where Megatron is still dominant, but not the 'first round generational talent playing against dudes that can barely put their own pads on' discrepancy.

If this guy were that good he'd be a cheat code. And frankly why are we just NOW hearing about him as a first day pick? Guy had a 1st round quarterback he played with for 2 seasons. If nothing else when teams/analysis are watching those tapes they'd see Watson. Yet it wasn't until he blew up at the combine that anyone was talking about him this high.

If you have Randy Moss playing against FCS opponents down there, SOMEBODY is gonna notice. We're not talking about Jerry Rice at Mississippi Valley in the early 80s - there are eyes everywhere.

And for all the talk of his perfect RAS score - guy didn't even run a 3-cone or short shuttle and that's where you worry about his length. Moreover, it's so arbitrary. Sure, he jumped out of the gym and ran really fast - so did Chris Conley but when they say "one of 3 guys to ever score that high with his height" - that's because they put the cutoff one inch taller than Conley at 6'3". Conley actually had longer arms. He had a better broad jump, much better vertical.

Watson isn't a unicorn. He's very athletic but there are guys like him almost every year at 6'2". And since he didn't DO the tests that might expose the issues associated with him being 6'4", I'm pretty hard pressed to just hand-waive them.

Because again, if we're putting all this stock into the stopwatch, why are we just ignoring the fact that he elected not to run those drills? There's absolutely a reason for that.

And again - I'm not saying he has NO ability. I'm saying he'd be a solid 3rd round pick and a possible pick in the late 2nd. For an FCS receiver that's just damn near unheard of.
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A few things...

First, re: Calvin Johnson

1. I've seen a few others say this, too... but Georgia Tech didn't run the triple option when Calvin Johnson was there. Chan Gailey was his coach, and they ran a multiple set, with lot of shotgun and early spread offense concepts.

2. Watson was his team's leading receiver as a sophomore, junior, and senior, just like Megatron was in his 3 years at Georgia Tech. They both played 38 games in those 3 years. You know what the difference in their receiving stats are? 2 catches/game (4.5 in an offense that threw 30 times a game instead of 2.5 in an offense that threw 20 times a game) and 25 yards per game.

Neither one of those offenses morphed into feeding the pig, as it was. Gailey ran it more than he threw it every year he had the biggest unicorn in college sports history.

Switching to that topic...

You're familiar with how successful that NDSU coaching staff has been and what a powerhouse that program is, right? They've won what, 9 of the past 11 championships at that level or something like that?

Even with Trey Lance they didn't alter their run-pass ratio. They have a system and the system and program seem to trump individual talent. Kind of like Nebraska in the Devaney/Osborne days, I guess.

Let's not act like coaching staffs don't make mistakes or stubbornly stick to their system, especially at the college level. Ole Miss had DK Metcalf and AJ Brown at the same time and somehow didn't give the ball to one of them every down.

Regarding his combine stuff...

Watson did run the 3-cone and shuttle at his pro day and put up good numbers in those, as well (above-average shuttle at 4.19 and 3-cone was above average as well at 6.96).

Finally, regarding why we're just hearing about him...

Well, before he got to the senior bowl and combine and started getting individual notice, he was a big, fast dude on a team that has never thrown it even 1 out of 3 downs while he has been there. Hard to get notice that way beyond the FCS level.
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I think both of you have fair points.
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I’m with Idaho. Watson is a rare talent and this draft is deep with productive wrs but it’s not deep with legit wr1 studs and that’s what Watson has the potential to be.
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A guy like Watson definitely presents a conundrum.

He has an athletic profile that absolutely screams at you "#1 WR," and I have little doubt about that. What you can't gauge is how well he's going to adapt to the NFL and how he will enhance his rudimentary route running. He's a definitive "boom or bust" prospect.

In the other corner, I look at a guy like Jalen Tolbert who doesn't have an elite athletic profile. He has a good profile, but not like Watson. What Tolbert does have is elite production and elite route-running skills (for college). His floor is incredibly higher, probably "productive #2 WR." When I do look at Tolbert's athletic profile though, I can't help but see a guy I really liked several years ago that turned out to be a draft steal and certified stud in Stefon Diggs.

So you can take a guy like Watson and hope he reaches his potential, which very well could be in the stratosphere of Justin Jefferson and Jamaar Chase, or he could easily bust. You could otherwise take a guy like Tolbert who looks to be at least a Marvin Jones caliber #2 that could be Stefon Diggs if he gets even better. When it comes to WRs, I've tried to evaluate more on that athletic profile and haven't had much luck with it in recent times. At this point, I'm taking Tolbert 100 out of 100 times early. I'll save my hopes for guys like Gray or Melton to bust out as a 4th/5th round pick.
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Having a QB like Mahomes under center and Andy running the show, give me the definite #2 guy. I think that combined with what Tolbert brings to the table coudl easily be elevated to "#1" production.
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I don't assume a guy that isn't doing WR things is going to start in the NFL.

Watson is big and fast. But he doesn't do much else for me.

Like you, I prefer other guys not getting hype.

Give me Khalil Shakir. 6 feet, ran a 4.4 and is an animal on the field.
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True story regarding the option. Even still, Georgia Tech only threw for 2,400 yards that season and Calvin was responsible for 1,200 of those yards and 15 scores.

While they weren't an option team, they were very much a run first team that found ways to get the ball to their superstar.

Regarding the pro day numbers - I just don't trust 'em. Never have. With even a 10th of a second grade inflation on that stuff he'd have forgettable figures there and just be another straight line guy for many.

Finally, as to getting noticed, I think you're absolutely right for a 2nd day pick. It's really hard for one of those guys to get noticed.

But if we're talking a 1st round talent, a guy who's athleticism is so unreal that we'll project it to NFL performance, performance against FCS schools be damned, I still think that WOULD stand out. That WOULD get noticed. Especially when he played for a program that had a guy that was getting scouts to come out.

If he's more of a 3rd round pick than a 1st round pick, then yeah - he could stay under the radar. But I have a hard time believing that this guy would be a 1st round pick and just explode onto the scene after flying so far below the radar for as long as he did.

Again - I don't want this to be another "YOU HATED CHRIS JONES!!" thing when I said he was a mid-2nd round player. No, I didn't say he was a 6'4" pile of shit. I even said for SOME teams using a pick around 50 would be a fine idea. This is for an FCS kid with nominal production at that level. I'm CLEARLY pricing a lot of these considerations into my calculus here.

I just don't think he'd be a good pick for us in the 2nd and I think he'd be an actively bad one in the 1st given our needs, the importance of us hitting on these picks and the bust potential that necessarily comes with some of the red flags I've discussed.
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