Scouting Notes
- Route tree wasn’t very diverse, mostly limited to go routes and posts.
- Outstanding after the catch, utilizing a great head-fake and side-steps to easily skirt tackles.
- While his ball adjustments are excellent, he goes for body catches way too often. As a result, the few times he had to make fully-extended catches, he was very underwhelming.
- Johnston physically beat up the underwhelming competition but shrank in big spots against more daunting opponents, such as Kelee Ringo or Will Johnson.
- Very light on his feet, especially for his size.
- Combine size measurements were very concerning. As a physical and contested-catch WR, 6’2″ isn’t great.
Short Summary
Quentin Johnston is one of the toughest evaluations in this draft. From the eye-test perspective, he feels like one of the safest and most dominant players in the entire draft. He is a massive Wide Receiver who utilizes his size very well, while also being exceptionally crafty after the catch and quick at route breaks.
On the other hand, his stats aren’t great, as he eclipsed 4 receptions only 3 times, and was held under 4 receptions in over a third of his games. Additionally, he isn’t a great high-pointer or outside-the-body receiver. It’s easy to start seeing shades of the plethora of big receivers that completely busted in the NFL.
Practically, I think Quentin Johnston has a great shot at being a truly dominant receiver at the next level. He will require some grooming, and I doubt he is great right away, but his long-term potential is sky-high. He is a great athlete with good size, and plenty of raw physical traits. There are very few receivers that possess his size and dominance paired with quick feet and change-of-direction ability. That rare combo is worth betting on, but he will need some polishing.
Scouting Card Key
- Age refers to the age of the player come draft night, rounded to the nearest half-age.
- Percentage numbers in the Player Info and Combine Stats sections – This refers to the percentile that number belongs to among all players at his position, going back nearly a decade.
- GP – Games Played
- Tgts – Targets
- Drops and Drop Rate – The percentiles of these stats are inverse; the higher the drop rate, the lower the percentile.
- YAC/Rec – Yards After Catch per Reception
- CTT – Targets deemed as contested by PFF Graders and Scouts.
- CTC% – Contested catch rate, or the percentage of the aforementioned targets that were caught
- Y/RR – This is the number of yards the player accumulated for every route he ran. This stat was found to highly correlate to NFL success. It is, in other words, a measure often a player is targeted when they are running a route, along with how much that player gained with each target.
- First Downs – While this one is pretty intuitive, I don’t think it is appreciated enough. This stat shows pretty clearly how often your team relied on you in high-leverage situations. There are first downs accrued in low-leverage situations, but in general, the players who get the most first downs, are the ones most relied on by their team to get first downs.
- Line-Wide% and Line-Slt% – How often a player lined up as the Wide Receiver, and how often as the Slot Receiver, respectively.
Credit
Advanced stats – pff.com
Scouting card template / idea – Jordan Pun @Texans_Thoughts
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