Nacua or N'Keal ? Prospect WR Analysis

Happy Combine Week! I’m excited to watch skill position players today. Although I’ll caution against placing too much stock in player 40 times!

Evaluating wide receivers entering the NFL draft is fascinating because of how differently the position can be played.

You have your speedsters, slot mavens, physical specimens, X receivers, contested-catch specialists, yards-after-the-catch monsters, and jack-of-all-trades elite WRs.

We've seen different types of wide receivers enter the NFL—some achieving incredible success, while others fizzle out quickly.

Two recent, notable examples are Puka Nacua and N’Keal Harry. Nacua, a 2023 fifth-round pick, has skyrocketed to fantasy superstardom, while Harry, a 2019 first-round pick, has faded into obscurity.

Harry entered a situation where he had the opportunity to become Tom Brady’s No. 1 target. Meanwhile, Nacua was expected to battle for a WR2/WR3 role alongside Cooper Kupp as a weapon for Matthew Stafford.

This isn't meant as a criticism of Harry or a glowing endorsement of Nacua but rather a case study in evaluating wide receivers. While both are outliers, the gap between their perceived and actual success is enormous, and there's a lot to learn from their trajectories.

Was Harry’s first-round pedigree warranted? Why did Nacua fall to the fifth round? How do advanced metrics compare these two players? What can we takeaway from this to become better at evaluating WRs?

Taking a look at key College Wide Receiver analytical metrics may help provide some clarity.

Definitions

Y/RR: Total Receiving Yards / Number of Routes Run

YAC/REC: Yards after the catch per Reception

Contested Catch %: Contested Catches/ Contested catch opportunities

Drop %: Drops/ On target passes

N’Keal was dominant in college but that did not translate in the NFL. His inability to create separation in his routes is widely regarded as the main reason why he has been unable to produce in the NFL. Some WRs are average at creating separation but they make up for it by being dominant in contested catch scenarios or dominant after the catch. Without those key traits it’s hard to win and score fantasy points in the NFL.

Puka was never dominant or even consistently on the field in college… and yet he burst onto the scene for the best rookie WR season ever. Puka fell because he lacked elite traits or elite production. He was adequately fast and quick but dominant in route running and his intangibles are off the charts. The Rams identified how special he was early on and snapped him up. *Go watch the Rams draft room’s reaction to drafting Puka on youtube if you haven’t seen it yet.

College injuries prevent us from seeing the best a prospect has to offer but sometimes in the case of Puka and more recently Ladd McConkey… prospects with elite talent have way of getting healthy and producing at the NFL level.

Where Puka shined and a stat that the football analytics community harps on is yards per route run (Y/RR). While not a perfect metric, this has seemed to have some predictive impact for NFL success.

Here are the top 12 2025 WR Finishers with their College YPRR: *Davante Adams technically finished as WR11 but I could not find his YPRR so he is left off the list

Slot receivers with a lower aDOT (average depth of target) also tend to work the middle of the field and are in less advantageous position to rack up high yardage. This is likely why slot WRs Amon-Ra and Terry McLaurin have such low Y/RR totals in the above table.

Yes, N’Keal Harry had a higher college Y/RR than Justin Jefferson & Brian Thomas Jr. It’s not a perfect metric by any means but I think you can put some value in it because these college Y/RRs of the top 12 are mostly elite. It can be a component of a holistic evaluation when looking at high Y/RR receivers with route running and separation ability.

You’ll notice virtually all of the top performing WRs had Y/RR above 2.6. Two other things that can skew Y/RR are running a lot of routes and not getting the ball as a function of having other dominant WR weapons commanding targets in your offense or just a bad QB who can’t get the WR the ball. In scenarios where you know that a WR had poor QB play (like Luther Burden) or other dominant weapons on his team (like Emeka Egbuka) you should take their Y/RR with a grain of salt.

One of the reasons why doing your own scouting is fun is because there is limitless information out there to acquire and use in your evaluation process. I think Y/RR is decent metric but film & production have their place in the evaluation process.

My personal takeaways from the last few years are that skill is the most important factor when it comes to player evaluation. Physical tools are nice but they have to be accompanied by high level WR skills; namely route running, the ability to create separation and football iq.

For every Tyreek Hill there are 10 Tyquan Thorntons and John Ross like players who have tremendous speed to stretch the field but they won’t be commanding targets at a high level and scoring touchdowns at a high rate. The antidote to looking for the golden metric is to consume vast amounts of information with a bias towards looking for skill dominant Wide Receivers. Elite route runners with adequate QB play will score fantasy points in bunches. Do not be seduced by gaudy 40 times as we find time and time again that they overinflate fantasy value.

There’s no crystal ball in fantasy but doing your due dilligence is fun and the rewards for being right are lasting if you hit on a player like Puka. I’ll apply my personal methodology in next week’s post with combine numbers in hand to try to identify impactful and undervalued WRs in this year’s draft class.

Stay Amped,

The Fantasy Amp Team

Fantasyamp.com 

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