The 23 Best Wide Receivers Available for Packers
The Green Bay Packers have a big need at receiver entering Day 2 of the NFL Draft on Friday. Here are 23 receivers still on the board.
No. 8: Colorado’s Laviska Shenault
No. 11: Notre Dame’s Chase Claypool
No. 13: Michigan’s Donovan Peoples-Jones
No. 14: Kentucky’s Lynn Bowden
No. 15: Florida’s Van Jefferson
Video: USC's Michael Pittman
RELATED: ULTIMATE PACKERS WR PREVIEW
Best of the Rest
No. 16: K.J. Hamler, Penn State (5-8 5/8, 178; DNP 40): Hamler was honorable-mention All-Big Ten as a receiver and returner as a redshirt sophomore, when he caught 56 passes for 904 yards (16.1 average) with eight touchdowns and averaged 21.4 yards per kickoff return and 5.5 yards per punt return. He averaged 18.0 yards per catch and 26.2 yards per kickoff return in 2018. He had a catch of 20-plus yards in 15 of his final 16 career games. In 2019, he had 17 catches of 20 or more yards, eight catches of 30-plus yards, five catches of 40-plus yards and three catches of 50-plus yards.
With that speed comes a nickname. “We always call him the ‘Human Joystick.’ He laughs. It’s kind of funny — but I think it fits,” fellow receiver Brandon Polk told Centre Daily. Despite the speed, he probably won’t be a consideration for Green Bay. Why? Over the previous 15 years, Randall Cobb is the shortest receiver drafted by the Packers – 1 1/2 inches taller than Hamler. “I just think most likely from my playmaking ability,” he said at the Combine. “You don’t see a lot of guys my size making players as well. I’m not your typical receiver, 6-5, 230 pounds, but I can prove in other areas with my speed, quickness, hands and elusiveness, so I think those are advantages to me.” His 16.9 percent drop rate was the worst among our top receivers. “Most definitely my hands last year,” he said of where he needs to improve. “I’m not proud of it. I dropped eight balls last year. A lot of teams know that by now. That’s why we were always 15 minutes early before practice. If you weren’t 15 minutes early, you were doing down-ups and nobody wanted to do that. For me, it was a lack of focus, lack of concentration while catching the ball. I would always turn my head and try to get upfield before ever securing the ball. The most important thing on the field is the ball. Basically just focusing on that, focusing the ball all the way into the tuck, I’ve been working on that from offseason until now.”
No. 17: Antonio Gibson, Memphis (6-0 3/8, 228; 4.39 40): Gibson played two seasons at Memphis. A receiver/running back, Gibson didn’t get many opportunities but he was a big play waiting to happen. In 2019, he caught 38 passes for 735 yards (19.3 average) and eight touchdowns and carried 33 times for 369 yards (11.2 average) and four scores. He also averaged 28.0 yards with one touchdown on kickoff returns. As a senior, only one player had more 50-yard plays than Gibson. For his career, 14 of his 44 offensive touches wound up in the end zone.
He is a man without a position, which is less of a problem today than in the past. He played running back at the Senior Bowl and carried 11 times for a game-high 68 yards but worked out with the receivers at the Scouting Combine. “I talked to a lot of teams that want to use me around. I don’t feel like they just want me to be a running back. You have to label me as something going into the draft and felt like this would be the best thing.” He started his career in junior college. “I’ve learned many things along the way and made way more family then I could ever imagine. At JUCO, I learned that everyone wants the same thing you want so you have to work 10 times harder to stand out and you can’t do it alone. When I got to Memphis, I had to learn that everyone had talent so what is going to make me get on the field. I had to take criticism and you can take that to heart or you can take it as motivation and go to work.” With 8 5/8-inch hands, he’ll likely be off some teams’ boards – including Green Bay’s.
No. 18: K.J. Hill, Ohio State (5-11 7/8, 196; 4.60 40): Hill had three banner seasons to finish his career with the school record for career receptions. He caught 56 passes as a sophomore, career highs of 70 passes for 885 yards as a junior and 57 passes for 636 yards and a career-high 10 touchdowns as a senior. That gave him a four-year total of 201 receptions for 2,332 yards and 20 touchdowns.
“I’m very versatile,” he said at the Combine. “I played mainly in the slot but have some packages, have some plays when I was on the outside. So, I feel I can do it all. … It’s really good for me because you could plug me anywhere. I don’t have to just be stuck in the slot and only come in on this play or this package. So a lot of teams are talking about using me everywhere.” His goal was to “run a good 40” but failed to deliver. The 40 time could take him off the board, though his play speed seemed faster. Hill caught 8-of-14 passes thrown 20-plus yards. He had a good week at the Senior Bowl and dropped just 3.3 percent of targeted passes. “I feel like in the one-on-ones, I didn’t lose a rep. I played outside, I won inside. I had one drop that whole week. So I feel like I proved how versatile I am.” Hill caught at least one pass in every game over his final three-and-a-half seasons
Hill grew up in Little Rock, Ark., but spurned his home-state team to play for Ohio State. Why? Former Buckeyes receivers coach Zach Smith said then-Arkansas coach Bret Bielema called to say Hill was canceling his visit to Ohio State. Why would a rival coach say that? “We got K.J. on the phone, got his dad on the phone,” Smith told 247Sports.com. “They were irately pissed at Arkansas. ‘You don’t speak for my son, you don’t speak for me.’ He came on his visit and basically he was done with Arkansas.”
No. 19: Bryan Edwards, South Carolina (6-2 3/4, 212; DNP 40): With four robust seasons, Edwards recorded 234 receptions for 3,045 yards (13.0 average) and 22 touchdowns to pass Sterling Sharpe and Alshon Jeffrey as the top receiver in school history. As a senior, he had a career-high 71 catches, which he turned into 816 yards (11.5 average) and six scores despite missing the end of the season with a knee injury. He had career-best numbers of 15.4 yards per catch and seven touchdowns as a junior. “He continues to set every record at that position here at the University of South Carolina,” coach Will Muschamp told the Post and Courier. “You think about some of the greats that have played here, and Bryan is certainly in that category.” He averaged a robust 7.7 yards after the catch.
Greatness was projected at an early age for the native on Conway, S.C. “Every time he touched the field, he did something special,” a former coach told the State, thinking back to Edwards’ middle school days. “Other than his size, his ability really stood out as a man among boys at that time. So, we felt like he would be special when he hit high school.” He elected to come back for his senior year. “I want anybody, whether they are from Conway, Myrtle Beach or wherever in South Carolina to know that they can do anything,” Edwards told MyHorryNews.com. “Just because you are from a small town doesn’t mean that you can’t accomplish anything.” He became a father in August. “You have to think that it’s not just about you anymore,” he told the Athletic. “You have to think about the person that is coming behind you and the kind of legacy you want to leave for them.”
No. 20: James Proche, SMU (5-10 5/8, 201; DNP 40): Proche led the nation with 111 receptions as a senior. He turned those into 1,225 yards (11.0 average) and 15 touchdowns. Including 93 receptions and 12 touchdowns as a junior, his four-year haul was 301 receptions for 3,949 yards (13.1 average) and 39 touchdowns. Including punt returns, kickoff returns and a few handoffs, he finished his career with 4,996 all-purpose yards. Proche finished his career as SMU’s all-time leader for receiving touchdowns, receiving yards, receptions and all-purpose yards. He might have the best hands in the draft, as evidenced by his 20 contested catches. That tied for first in the draft class, a remarkable feat for a player his size. On the other hand, he wasn’t much of a threat after the catch.
“I want to be remembered as a winner," Proche told the Dallas News late in a season of production and mentorship. "Not a big-catch guy, statistics guy, highlight guy. I want to be a winner here. However, I can finish doing that, doing my job, that’s what I’m focused on.” During training camp while in high school, he suffered acute kidney failure. He spent a week in a hospital and was sidelined for two months. "One of my Achilles' heels is I think I'm Superman. I don't like to show weakness," Proche told Rivals. "But I felt vulnerable at that point. It was scary, very scary. I remember one night, I cried. You can only hold your emotions for so long. When your cape comes off, that's when reality hits.”
No. 21: Tyler Johnson, Minnesota (6-1 3/8, 206): Johnson piled up a four-year total of 213 receptions for 3,305 yards (15.5 average) and 33 touchdowns. Most of the damage came as a junior (78 catches, 1,169 yards, 12 touchdowns) and senior (86 catches, 1,318 yards, 13 touchdowns). He was All-Big Ten first-team in each of those final two seasons. At one point, he scored in seven consecutive games, and he was MVP of the Outback Bowl to close his career by riddling Auburn with 12 catches for 204 yards. He dominated in contested-catch situations, hauling in 16 at a 66.7 percent clip that was tied for second in the draft class and was superb with 13 catches in 18 deep targets. He skipped the Shrine Game and the Combine workouts.
Johnson could have entered the draft last year but wanted to set an example for his four younger siblings and the people of his hometown of Minneapolis. “A lot went into it,” he said at the Combine. “I talked to my family, close friends, support staff, and came to the conclusion it was best for me to come back for my senior year. I had a lot to work on. I had a lot to get better at, and also I got my degree, as well, which is very important to me and my family, because football is not going to be here forever.” He’s not fast but he’s tough, physical and versatile, having produced 67 receptions from the slot as a senior. “It’s a very talented group of receivers here. I like watching all these guys play, but I would say my skill set – very versatile receiver, played inside and outside. I’m a big-bodied receiver or nice-sized bodied receiver, so to go in there and block or make plays is important for my game.”
Johnson almost literally saved Minneapolis North High School – the school, not just the athletic program – through his domination at quarterback. “It started with him,” North High football coach Charles Adams told the Star-Tribune. “Now we have transformed to a mindset of, ‘Why not us?’ We’re going to get to the state championship. We’re going to do everything that everyone else says they can do. It doesn’t matter where we’re from. We know what we can do.”
No. 22: Gabriel Davis, UCF (6-2, 216; 4.54 40): Davis caught 152 passes for 2,447 yards and 23 touchdowns in three seasons. As a junior, he caught 72 passes for 1,241 yards (17.2 average) and 12 touchdowns. He caught 16-of-41 deep passes – tied for the deepest receptions in the draft class.
“Gabe is very focused on what he wants to accomplish individually,” coach Josh Heupel said before the season. “He goes about that with extra film time in the meeting room and when we get done working out in the summer, he’s the first guy back out catching balls out of the Jugs [machine],” Heupel said. “He’s kind of spearheaded that group of guys who try to emulate him and act like a pro does.” Visions of the top prospects in this draft class filled his mind en route to a 73-yard touchdown in an October game against UConn. “All I know is that when I caught the ball, I thought of all the other guys like [Alabama’s] Jerry Jeudy, [Oklahoma’s] CeeDee Lamb and [Clemson’s] Justyn Ross making big plays like that,” Davis told the Orlando Sentinel. “… That was literally what was going through my head when I caught the ball. I had to do the same thing that those guys were doing.” His start in football didn’t go so well. “The funny thing is when he started, the first week of the little league is about conditioning but that second week it was time to put on the pads and hit somebody and he didn’t like it,” his mother told the Orlando Times. “I went to his room the next day and he was crying, and he said that he didn’t like it. I think it was that physical contact that made him think twice about it.”
No. 23: Joe Reed, Virginia (6-0 1/2, 224; 4.47 40): Reed caught 52 passes in his first three seasons but 77 passes for 679 yards (8.8 average) and seven touchdowns as a senior. Don’t let that meager average suggest he’s not explosive. He was a huge threat on kickoff returns with career marks of 28.7 yards per run back and five touchdowns. As a senior, he was a first-team All-American with a 33.2-yard average and a pair of scores. He is the only player in FBS history with 2,700-plus career kick return yards and a career kick return average of 28-plus yards. As a junior, he averaged 18.6 yards per catch with seven touchdowns on 25 catches. His four-year totals were 129 receptions for 1,465 yards and 16 touchdowns. As a senior, his 2.4 percent drop rate was tied for third-best in the draft class, but he caught only 2-of-15 deep passes.
Reed’s explosiveness on returns gave him a bit of a green light. His father was a train engineer. “That was my favorite part of growing up – riding the train with my dad,” Reed told the school Web site. “I always liked the view.” As part of that Q&A, he discussed his favorite hobby: frog gigging. My friends and I would always do it. We would always walk around the banks. When the sun goes down, there’s not much else to do, so we would be like, ‘Hey, let’s go catch some frogs.’ We’d skin ’em and cook ’em the next morning. They are really good.”
No. 24: Antonio Gandy-Golden, Liberty (6-4, 223; 4.60 40): Gandy-Golden finished his senior year ranked No. 4 in the country in receiving yards (1,396) and No. 5 in receiving yards per game (107.4). As a senior, he had 79 receptions for 1,396 yards (17.7 average) and 10 touchdowns to earn a place in the Senior Bowl. He became the first player in program history to record 1,000 receiving yards in three consecutive seasons (1,396 yards as a senior, 1,037 as a junior and 1,066 as a sophomore). He is the school’s all-time leader in receiving yards (3,814), receptions (240) and receiving touchdowns (33). As a senior, his 2.2 percent drop rate was good for second in the draft class.
Gandy-Golden didn’t begin playing football until his freshman year of high school. The big guy’s balance and flexibility come from his gymnastics background. That’s the sport he competed in as a youth in Chicago as a way to keep him out of trouble. “My balance is definitely better because of the tumbling,” Gandy-Golden told the Daily Orange. “I’ve always been strong for my size but I have a better idea of how to jump and use my body.” He put himself on the map with 13 catches for 192 yards and two touchdowns vs. Baylor in 2017. “It just shows because he has unbelievable balance. He can do all types of frontflips and backflips and all that type of stuff,” Liberty receivers coach Kyle DeArmon told the News and Advance. “All of that stuff transitions over to the football field mainly because of the balance that he has. He’s able to stay on his feet, he’s able to control his body to go up and make those type of catches.”
No. 25: Quintez Cephus, Wisconsin (6-0 7/8, 201; 4.62 40): Cephus returned from a season-long suspension to catch 59 passes for 901 yards (15.3 average) and seven touchdowns. He caught 13 touchdowns over his final two years, both seasons ending with All-Big Ten honorable mentions. A slow 40 and smallish hands (8 3/4 hands) could take him off the board, but he consistently flashed strong hands last season. His contested-catch rate of 66.7 percent was tied for second-best in the draft class and his 91 percent rate on catchable passes was good for fifth. “Honestly, it’s a mind-set. It’s a mind-set. Wanting to make the contested plays when your number’s called, you don’t get that many opportunities and I wanted to make the most of every single opportunity that I got. My coaches and my teammates put me in a position to make those types of plays and that’s really what I wanted to do.”
In April 2018, Cephus engaged in sexual acts with two female University of Wisconsin students. Cephus said the sexual acts were consensual; the women said they were not. According to their complaints, they were incapacitated from alcohol and did not provide their consent. One woman allegedly went to an emergency room and claimed she had been raped. On Aug. 3, 2019, he was acquitted in deliberations that lasted less than 45 minutes. A couple of weeks later, he was reinstated by the school; shortly thereafter, he was reinstated to the football program. He dominated from the start. “It’s definitely the craziest experience that I’ve had in my life, just waiting,” he said at the Combine. “I remember being in the courtroom and my lawyer, we never really talked about if, we didn’t know what the jury came up with. And my lawyer kind of told me, ‘Either this is going to be really good or it’s going to be really bad.’ Like, that was like 5 seconds before I sat down in my chair to hear the verdict. And just listening to the judge read off ‘Not Guilty’ verdicts for both charges, I was kind of, it was a surreal feeling, something that really was, it was just a crazy feeling.”
No. 26: John Hightower, Boise State (6-1 1/2, 189; 4.43 40): After two seasons at Hinds (Miss.) Community College, Hightower caught 31 passes for 504 yards (16.3 average) and six touchdowns and a 20.1-yard average on kickoff returns as a junior. As a senior, he caught 51 passes for 943 yards (18.5 average) and eight touchdowns and averaged 24.6 yards per kickoff return with one touchdown. He’s a deep threat who offered little after the catch.
Hightower was ruled academically ineligible for the bowl game following the 2018 season but got his grades and career back on track. “He’s become a better teammate. He’s become a better leader on our team, and then because of that I think he’s experiencing success because he’s handling himself the right way,” Boise State coach Bryan Harsin told the Idaho Statesman. “You wake up in the morning and you know you’re doing things right and you know you’re taking care of business, then you can go out there and you can perform at whatever it is you want to do. It happens to be football for him, and he’s really good at it.” He has a passion for riding dirt bikes – right down to a “Bike Life” tattoo.
At Hinds, he finished fourth in the 400-meter hurdles at the junior college national championships. In fact, he went to Hinds to run track instead of playing football. He tried out for the football team in 2015. “Once I got there I talked to my mom and told her I couldn’t just run track, so I told her I would try out for the football team,” Hightower told the Idaho Press. “And my first year trying out for the football team I didn’t make it, so I ran track another year and the second year I made it.”
No. 27: Jauan Jennings, Tennessee (6-3 1/8, 215; 4.72 40): Jennings caught 146 passes for 2,153 yards and 18 touchdowns. Each of those figures ranks in the top five in school history. His biggest year was his final year when he caught 59 balls for 969 yards (16.4 average) and eight touchdowns. He also tossed two touchdown passes (one each as a freshman and sophomore) and made an interception on defense (as a sophomore). A horrendous 40 could take him off many teams’ boards; he caught just 6-of-20 deep passes. However, on those 59 catches, he broke 30 tackles. That’s 1.97 catches per broken tackle, by far the best in the class.
Jennings arrived at Tennessee as a quarterback but moved to a receiver as a freshman. "I thought I could play (at quarterback) this year," Jennings told the Times Free-Press. "Josh Dobbs, he's earned the position. I didn't want to sit down on the sideline. I wanted to seriously explore my talents and see what I could do. Until I got here, I'd never played receiver before, but it's just something with my talents and skill set, it kind of is natural.” He suffered a season-ending wrist injury in the 2017 opener. That was the least of his problems, though. He was kicked off the team late that season following a profanity-laced video targeting the former coaching staff. “Being able to have that second chance, you kind of realize this game can be taken away from you in the blink of an eye,” Jennings told the Associated Press in October. Jeremy Pruitt was hired as coach in December 2017 and brought Jennings back. “I asked a lot of people in the building what they thought, and most of them that said, ‘I wouldn’t let him come back,’ they don’t work here anymore,” Pruitt said. “The people that said to let him come back, they all work here.” He was suspended for the first half of this year’s bowl game following an ugly incident. His nickname is “Juice Man.” He explained: “Every day I wake up and come in with juice. That’s something you’ve got to possess. You can’t just go out there and buy juice, you’ve got to own it. Ever since I’ve been here, I come up here with large amounts of energy and it’s never changed, so I’m juice man.” Sister Alexis Jennings played basketball at Kentucky and South Carolina, collecting all-SEC honors as a senior with Gamecocks in 2018-19.
No. 28: Collin Johnson, Texas (6-5 5/8, 222; DNP 40): Johnson was the big man on campus. He caught 188 passes for 2,624 yards and 15 touchdowns in four seasons. As a junior, he caught 68 passes for 985 yards (14.5 average) and seven touchdowns. His senior year was limited to seven games with a hamstring injury, and he reeled in 38 balls for 559 yards and three scores. He was surprisingly ineffective in contested-catch situations and had the worst broken-tackle rate of our top receivers.
“I think that being tall, it's hard to get in and out of breaks by nature, so that's something I've really worked on and I move very well for my size and I'm going to continue to improve that,” he said at the Cobine. “It's a lot of work, I'm working with Ricky Proehl. I've been working with him red zone, red zone, red zone. You can't teach height, and I have an advantage over anyone I play. At the end of the day, I have an advantage but I don't want to rely on that, I want to be a crafty route-runner and an all-around player.”
He has the genes. His father, Johnnie, was a two-time Texas All-American defensive back, a College Football Hall of Famer and a first-round draft pick by the Rams in 1980 who had a 10-year NFL career. An uncle, Bobby Johnson, played defensive back at Texas, and his mom, Julie, is a former actor and cheerleader for the Los Angeles Rams. His brother, Kirk, played running back for Texas and his sister, Camille, competes in the javelin on Texas’ track and field team.
Johnson was battling a hip flexor at the Combine so he didn’t run a 40. Not that he’s worried. “(Speed is) important, but if you look at the NFL, it's people who can create separation all the time. A lot of guys who can do that have long careers in the NFL – you talk about Cris Carter, he ran a 4.7. Jerry Rice, Larry Fitzgerald, it's about finding that edge and how you can get open even if you're not faster than the guy you are going against.”
No. 29: Quartney Davis, Texas A&M* (6-1 1/4, 201; 4.54 40): Davis redshirted after tearing an ACL in 2016 and didn’t catch a pass while dealing with shoulder problems in 2017. In his final seasons, Davis caught 45 passes in 2018 and 54 in 2019. He headed to the NFL with two-year marks were 99 catches for 1,201 yards (12.1 average) and 11 touchdowns. In 2019, when most of his work came in the slot, he dropped too many passes (9.1 percent), caught just 1-of-8 deep balls and averaged a ho-hum 4.6 yards after the catch.
"I've put in so much work, stayed faithful and just kept on working and working," Davis told the Houston Chronicle at the start of the season. "I feel like this is the right time for me.” His position coach at Langham High in Houston was Milton Wynn, a former NFL receiver who was drafted in the fourth round by the Rams in 2001. “He wants to play. He works out in the athletic period and then he comes back in after school and get another workout in,” Langham Creek head coach Todd Thompson said in 2016. “Then he goes to track practice and he will go work with a speed coach to work on his footwork. It’s all day for him, nonstop.”
