And yet Lazard is a very effective NFL player.
Just like he was a very effective college player.
Will McDonald Projected 8th Overall to Falcons
- Thread starter DrewCo
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Just like he was a very effective college player.
The pros are going to draft guys that can help them no matter where they are from. I highly doubt front offices see a guy from ISU and let that dictate their decision. Lazard is a limited athlete at a position that loves to draft on athleticism.
Not to mention at how many long TD catches he has for such a slow guy.
You would be mistaken.
Nolan Smith is a former gaudy HS recruit who was in exactly the position Will is right now—despite the fact that he went to a school that is both an NFL factory and SEC school in Georgia.
Because of a lack of production in college.
Then he ripped off gaudy numbers at the NFL Combine. For example, a 4.39 40…and compare that to Will’s Pro Day 4.69.
Will was in a great position to grab immense momentum. That Pro Day number killed it. Unless he runs a better time for a team in private workouts.
A much better time. I’m actually bewildered at how slow it was.
As far as your Van Ness comments, he also killed it at the Combine, including a 4.58 40 that is substantially better than the time Will is credited with—with a much bigger frame.
If you really want to be comparative, see how Anthony Johnson (4.54 40) is drafted compared to Iowa’s Kaevon Merriweather (4.62). It may turn out you have an argument there.
The fact that a guy with incredible production and film is getting dinged for a 40 he ran with a 103 degree fever shows exactly that the NFL does some really stupid ****.
Well, someone’s doing stupid ****.
Will did not run with a 103 degree fever. The numbers he put up at the Combine were two days later…and did not include a forty. Indeed, most of those numbers that day were superior, even remarkable.
The forty time is from his pro day, weeks later. Absolutely nothing to do with him being sick.
You might want to stop trying now, you keep digging yourself in deeper.
When McDonald slips into the 2nd or 3rd round and goes onto have a high profile career where he's among the most celebrated pass rushers in the NFL people will comment aloud wondering how the hell he fell to those rounds.
Because that’s never, ever happened before with any player from P5 schools other than ISU ever.
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Oh boy, Al. I will always love Lazard, but he's not top 15-20 at his position in the NFL. He might not have even been the best receiver on his team, this past year, and that was on a team that was generally thought to have one of the weaker receiving corps in the league.
He's a good blocker, and a good red zone target. He has proven that he has a place in the league, and that story is worthy of being told, but no GM is kicking themselves, in 2023, for not drafting him when he came out of college.
He seemed pretty well sought after this off season.
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The Jets signed him in hopes of attracting Aaron Rodgers, and are paying him a modest contract, for a WR, of $11million a year, which does not put him in the top 15-20 at his position.
And again, I'm not denigrating Lazard. He's a great story, and he deserves every good thing that's coming to him. But let's not make his story into something it isn't. Should he have been drafted? Yes. But it's not like the hindsight is blinding us. He probably should have been a day 3 pick. 4th or 5th round. That's not a travesty, though. The draft is a crapshoot. Stories like Lazard's happen every year.
Yeah, Lazard is an awesome dude and great cyclone but he isn't one of the 20 best WR in the league.
39th in receiving yards, 51st in receptions, 24th in TDs. On a team that had low talent at receiver.
He's one of the 10 best blocking WRs but that doesn't raise his status that much.
Top 20 is off, but I’d have to imagine there are plenty of organizations that wish they’d have drafted him.
I lean more towards this however the bias does exist. I don't think it's ever explicit IE. "draft X guy over Y because Y went to Z." but in what sort of things they're willing to overlook or take more seriously, etc. I don't have a doubt in my mind that Will playing at a football factory and puts up the numbers he did and tests well, he is likely a pretty solidly first round guy, hell he probably would have been last year. Same with Breece being seen as a much different level prospect than like Bijan this year.
But overall it's probably overblown and it's not a conspiracy.
Slow is relative. Allen, Will, Hakeem all have long strides. They care about your burst on the line and at receiver so 40 time matters a lot for them, but when those guys are in the open field, they ain't slow.
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Potentially, but wideouts of his caliber are available in free agency every single off-season. There's plenty of opportunity to rectify missing on a player like Lazard, if you want to. Not many organizations are still going to be holding a candle for a slightly above replacement level player, after passing on him, 5 years into his career.
Not a Ness fan, but I did watch him block TWO punts against us last year. He seems to have a lot of ability, just like McDonald. McDonald will have plenty of opportunities in the NFL, so will Ness. This argument seems to be going nowhere.
Oh for sure there's some bias. And some schools that have produced more pros probably get the benefit of the doubt but ISU guys aren't dropping rounds or out of the draft because these NFL teams are anti ISU
I think there's probably a little bit of availability bias, where teams are more willing to draft players who they have heard of or seen more, or from programs/coaches who they've drafted from more often. But we as fans have the same issue, except more so, where we're familiar with Iowa State players so we overrate them.
Scouting and development are kind of a crapshoot in pretty much all sports, so teams tend to take the guys with the physical tools, because that's something that is more certain and coaches are always going to be confident (whether they should be or not) that they can improve the technique or mental aspect of the game. But with a guy like Lazard, he pretty much has had to max out everything else in order to have a significant NFL impact. Credit to him, he's done that, but there wasn't a lot of room for error. It's kind of the football version of Georges Niang, where Georges had to become one of the best, most consistent 3-point shooters in the league in order to stick, despite being a ridiculously productive college player.
Scouting and development are kind of a crapshoot in pretty much all sports, so teams tend to take the guys with the physical tools, because that's something that is more certain and coaches are always going to be confident (whether they should be or not) that they can improve the technique or mental aspect of the game. But with a guy like Lazard, he pretty much has had to max out everything else in order to have a significant NFL impact. Credit to him, he's done that, but there wasn't a lot of room for error. It's kind of the football version of Georges Niang, where Georges had to become one of the best, most consistent 3-point shooters in the league in order to stick, despite being a ridiculously productive college player.
I'm with you. My $0.02 is scouts appear to routinely overthink based on measurables/ projections and forget actual production.
I hope Will isn't in a position to be running many open field 40's in the NFL or i think the staff might be misusing his talents.
