Roundtable: Stock Down in Early March

Photo: Katie Stratman, USA Today Sports

Combine week is when the NFL draft process hits high gear. Here at Footballguys, we have wall-to-wall coverage of the event. Official size measurements and athletic testing help fill out the profile. The ultimate result is the release of Update 2.0 of The 2023 Rookie Draft Guide. Setting the stage, we gathered the staff for questions.

Who is a player whose stock is trending down for you going into the NFL Combine?

RB Jahmyr Gibbs, Alabama

Dan Hindery - Gibbs is a very good player but feels slightly overvalued to me right now. He is too explosive not to have some role in the NFL, but he is not the lock for an Alvin Kamara type of role in the NFL, as everyone is assuming. Gibbs is not the biggest guy and does not run with as much power as Kamara. He also is not much of a pass-blocker. Gibbs is one of the rookies who I just cannot get behind at his current valuation (mid-fifth round) in early Best Ball drafts. I also do not think he is a stone-cold lock to be the rookie RB2 by the time we get to dynasty rookie drafts in a couple of months.

RB DeWayne McBride, UAB

Ben Cummins - McBride is a tough evaluation for me. His body type is a hybrid between a big and small running back; he only caught five total passes in college and faced weaker competition at UAB. He’ll need to test very well for me to believe he has any future consistent dynasty value, and I don’t expect that to happen.

RB Chase Brown, Illinois

Jason Wood - Brown was a workhorse at Illinois, and he led the nation with 1,883 yards from scrimmage on an astounding 355 touches this season. But he showed poorly at the Senior Bowl, lacking burst or lateral mobility and struggling mightily with ball security, route running, and pass protection. Today's NFL has little room for one-dimensional bruisers. If you can't catch or pass protect, you're not going to get playing time in the pros.

WR Quentin Johnston, TCU

Christian Williams - The most general answer to this question is "wide receivers," but Quentin Johnston seems to be viewed more negatively among the ambiguous receiver class. While Johnston should perform well at the Combine, he has the most to lose with potential overinflation of height/weight listings in college. He'll test well in the explosive-centric drills but may run slower than many have projected. Johnston has fallen to the late-first round in industry mocks lately, and a bad performance this week could push him outside the Top 32 entirely.

Alfredo Brown - He's big and fast. That's been the drumbeat for Johnston all draft season. But what does he do better than the other top receivers in the class? He's near or at the bottom of the class in best season catch rate (61.9%), contested catch rate (34.8%), drop rate (11.8%), and touchdown rate (10%). For a guy that's big and fast, the numbers don't add up. His redeeming numbers are the yards after the catch per reception, which rank first in the class (8.9). The only issue with his YAC numbers is that TCU had three different receivers finish in the Top 16 in the nation in terms of YAC amongst draft-eligible receivers. Johnston is a project player that looks to be a product of a catch-and-run system that brought TCU a lot of success in 2022.