Assorted NFL draft thoughts
Tetairoa McMillan, an exciting rookie RB class, and more
I can’t believe it’s already draft week. Up until a couple weeks ago, I’ve been about as disengaged from football over the past couple months as I can remember in an NFL offseason, but it was a super healthy time for me, both personally and professionally.
On the personal side, I’ve been spending a lot of time with my kids — my daughter’s softball team, which I’m helping coach, won their first two games last week to start the season 2-0 — and I worked through a 90-day fitness program I was proud to finish up in April. Professionally, I’ve been finding that natural passion for this stuff.
When I’m writing all the time, it can feel repetitive. Not just the process, but the actual analysis — it all feels like applying the same stuff, over and over. A big part of that is because I write literally hundreds of thousands of words every season, after what is always a heavy sprint through the summer. By the end of an NFL season, I’ve written multiple books’ worth of words over about a six-month period. And that can impact the work, for obvious reasons. When things are both repetitive and taxing, you have to fight to keep from cutting corners. Fortunately, I’m overly meticulous, so even if I cut a corner here or there in late-season Stealing Signals writeups, that dial is just turned down a few degrees.
But it’s a fun time right now. I feel refreshed. Like I said, I haven’t been this detached in an offseason in a while, and feeling certain types of ways I haven’t felt for a while is healthy. I’ve always been obsessed with this stuff, long before I made it a career, and it’s always good to remember the positive ways we’re drawn to the things we love.
So, I’m excited to dig back into so many concepts I’ve allowed to get a little stale in my brain. It feels like I can re-approach them with a fresh mind, all over again. Over these past couple weeks, as I’ve started to consume others’ content around the draft, the wheels have really been turning. It always takes me a bit of time to get back into writing shape, and get to where I can get those ideas down, but anyway, I’m excited for all that.
Of course, the NFL calendar waits for no one. The draft is this week, and while I’ve never been a big prospect guy, I do like to get some pre-draft thoughts out to you guys each year. A big part of why I don’t consider myself a big prospect guy is that’s not really how got into this, and I don’t find the naturally motivating interest in digging really deep into rookie profiles. But the bigger reason I haven’t forced myself to push through that over the years to do the work is there’s so, so much fantastic prospect research out there.
I always start with Shawn Siegele’s work in the RotoViz Rookie Guide, and those of you who listen to Stealing Bananas know I think he’s legitimately good enough at prospect evaluation to be better than some NFL teams, and that he should probably work in the NFL in some capacity. It’s been a decade now of watching this guy come to conclusions that not only have a fantastic hit rate, but consistently defy the conventional wisdom in a way that just genuinely never ceases to amaze me. Most fantasy analysts are a little too confident in their processes, and don’t seem to know what they don’t know; I don’t think of Shawn like a fantasy analyst, let’s put it that way.
But there are a ton of fantastic analysts in the fantasy space, as well, and they all do extremely thorough work breaking down the prospect profiles. There are a ton of ways to look at these guys that we know are useful for our purposes, and there are always improving elements, but I’d say the foundational stuff has been like 80% known for a half decade or more. Like I said, there are always minor improvements, and some analysts do things slightly differently, but every analyst is going to write about Bowling Green TE prospect Harold Fannin Jr. by discussing how utterly absurd his production profile was, but how it came against inferior opponents (though he did step up when playing power-conference foes!) and how his athletic profile isn’t great, possibly including that he’s duck-footed (i.e. he runs weird). There are always little contextual points that are interesting, like the fact that Fannin did step up when playing power-conference foes (11-137-1 against Penn State and 8-145-1 against Texas A&M last year), but the broad notes of Fannin’s profile are going to be the same no matter who is writing that player up.
And my point as it relates to this newsletter is I just can’t improve on the fantastic work that’s out there, starting with Shawn, but also featuring the extreme thoroughness of all of what Pat Kerrane does at Legendary Upside, JJ Zachariason’s great work at Late-Round Football, Jakob Sanderson’s work at Thinking About Thinking, Rich Hribar’s work at Sharp Football, Dwain McFarland’s work at Fantasy Life, Matt Harmon’s work at Reception Perception, Blair Andrews’ work at RotoViz, Scott Barrett’s work at Fantasy Points, Jacob Gibbs’ work at CBS Fantasy — I don’t want to forget anybody deserving, but the point is each of these guys (and more) has done Stealing Signals-length work breaking down the profiles of different prospects. We’re absolutely spoiled in the fantasy industry with a ton of great, in-depth rookie coverage this time of year.
I’ve read all of the above listed analysts’ work before, but not necessarily this year. The reason for that is not that I’m trying to argue the information they provide is all the same — it’s not, because there are definitely different ways to look at profiles and unique strengths that each analyst provides. It’s not the case that every one of those analysts likes or dislikes every player the same, and in fact that’s not even close to the reality.
But that gets at the biggest question with all of this: How to apply it. The notes on the individual profiles are what they are, but then it becomes about analyzing and applying that. Fantasy is a market-based game, right? When everyone agrees, that gets baked into ADP, dynasty trade valuations, and the other market-based pricing.
So it’s about finding edges, as always. And where we find them might be in those caveats that aren’t the major notes of the profile. One of the truths to any prospect profile is there is stuff we don’t know. Of course, the above listed analysts are good enough to know that — and when you read their work, they acknowledge as much, and they try to provide important context where it’s needed. But I started this point by saying I have never really felt to urge to dig super deep into prospect profiles myself, and the reasoning is I don’t feel the need to check the work of the above analysts as it relates to the depth of their research. Where we might disagree, though, is in how we apply that research. Importantly, these are two distinct elements to a piece of fantasy content, but I think it’s very difficult for consumers to read extremely strong and thorough analysis and then question the application of it at the end of the breakdown. Unfortunately, very thorough research does not guarantee correct application of that research, because again, these things are distinct.
As I read through multiple variations of writeups on some players, it’s hard not to get the feeling that certain aspects of individual profiles become engrained as fact at a rate that is likely more confident than we should be, from an actionability standpoint. Take the notes on Tetairoa McMillan, pretty much the consensus WR1 this year, assuming we’re viewing Travis Hunter a little differently.
Tetairoa McMillan’s downfield ability
I’ve seen McMillan comped to Drake London more times than I can count — not necessarily from the fantasy analysts above, but more from the “real” NFL draft analysts out there, where this London comp is what I’d deem a heavy consensus — and the case for that seems to be predicated on McMillan’s profile of success in the intermediate areas more than as a deep receiver.
I read both Pat’s and Jakob’s writeups of McMillan, and thought both were fantastic. Because they are also two of my best buds in the industry, I won’t mind pulling from them a little to make this point, but the last thing you should do is take this as criticism of either of them, as their writeups were both fantastic.
Both mentioned that Harmon’s Reception Perception charting liked McMillan more as an underneath receiver, with Pat mentioning Harmon noted similarities to Michael Thomas, and Jakob mentioned his worst-charted route for Harmon was the 9 route (i.e. deep). Both mentioned McMillan’s contested catch rate on deep targets specifically as a point in favor of this charting from Harmon, and it’s factual, but it’s important to note the raw numbers here — per PFF, we’re talking about 11 contested on 31 total deep targets in 2024, and 13 on 28 total in 2023, so not a large sample.
Where I’m going with this is when the charting and the data matches up, it becomes easy to work back to that London (or Michael Thomas) comp. Another name that comes is Mike Evans, and I like the way Pat put this: “McMillan sometimes gets compared to Mike Evans. He’s not that type of player. Instead, McMillan is an intermediate producer. He’s a possession WR with juice.” In Jakob’s conclusion, he offered this intriguing note: “[McMillan] does have legitimate limitations in his game and the dissonance between his surface-level profile and his skill-set leaves him open to misuse by play-callers.”
This is what I’d call somewhat of a consensus about the type of player we have, and since McMillan is probably the most notable WR in this class, I wanted to discuss this particular point. I want to hypothesize that this profile — what’s undeniably in the data — could be completely wrong.
First, I’d argue that the deep contested target rate doesn’t really provide additional information to support Harmon’s charting work, but rather it just confirms it. This is not some trick point I’m arguing someone missed, but it’s an important thing to crystallize when you’re thinking about this. All of the evidence we have been presented comes from a limited sample which includes McMillan’s deep routes, and for any player, deep routes make up a limited — and high-variance, because the passes have to travel furthest — percentage of the overall pool. In Harmon’s charting, which includes not just plays he was targeted but all deep routes, we do see that his “green” routes by percentage are all the intermediate ones, and he didn’t run a lot of 9 routes, relative to expectation (hence the red color), which is particularly noticeable to me when you consider he also didn’t run a lot of the short, underneath stuff. All three of those routes are red, which meant McMillan was getting downfield often, and still the 9 route was a limited part of his profile.
This is where I might want to bring up his production. McMillan is a three-year early declare who posted a very strong 702 yards and 8 TDs as a true freshman and then two dominant seasons after that, registering 1,402 and 1,319 yards with 10 and 8 TDs. It’s a pretty sterling production profile predicated on how utterly dynamic he is in the intermediate range.
So what’s the issue? At the college level, he didn’t have the deep production, and his team wasn’t really using him that way. One way to frame that is they didn’t necessarily push him to do stuff deep because they felt that was a limitation, but we could also say the way they were using him made a lot of sense because he was so good. We might also note that his QB during all of this, Noah Fifita — a guy he played with in high school, hence his decision to go to Arizona to stay with his buddy, despite being a big enough prospect to have interest from more prestigious programs — could be the one with the limitation.
But my main point here is Jakob’s note that the limitation to his game might leave him open to misuse by playcallers does put a significant amount of confidence on the analysis of the profile. And this is where I will say that I think the analysis here is compelling enough that that’s probably the case. But I guess I think it’s like 60% or 70% likely that this is McMillan’s true profile, and there are a lot of other outcomes.
Those other outcomes are what interest me here. Certainly, some of those include bust risk, which may lead to us looking back and believing he just wasn’t very good at anything, and the intermediate stuff was only a result of the offense or the QB connection or something, as our hindsight explanation. That seems unlikely to me, but it has to be acknowledged.
The other outcomes here include some exciting stuff. If he’s actually this good in the intermediate, but something with the offense or the QB was masking his deep ability — and there’s an NFL system or QB that can unlock it — we’re talking about a potential superstar.
This is where I want to get into the Evans comp. It does seem the data and film agree there’s some concern about McMillan’s ability to win deep, but what I’ve seen a couple times are notes that it’s McMillan’s weakest trait — which isn’t really that much of a knock because we’re comparing it to truly fantastic age-adjusted intermediate production, and deep stuff is small sample and high variance, and you can build a really strong production profile at the next level with just average deep production if you’re dominant closer to the line of scrimmage — and also that he’s not actually a Mike Evans (as Pat noted, and quickly debunked).
The Evans thing is maybe my biggest issue here. Mike Evans was a three-year early declare who became a top-10 pick then went on to produce 1,000+ yards in more consecutive seasons than any WR ever, and he did all of this largely because of one dominant trait. Early in Evans’ career, the knock on him was the lack of YAC ability downfield. He could win targets at high depths and absolutely rack up air yards, and he was good at bringing in those air yards, but he wouldn’t add much after the catch, some would say. And he didn’t do a whole lot in the shorter ranges, either, all of which was evidence he wasn’t actually all that good. This might seem like a strawman so I have to ask that you just believe me that even after his first couple strong seasons, that was very much part of the Mike Evans discourse. It’s when I was coming up in the fantasy space, and I remember especially before his huge 2016 — a monster Year 3 performance with 96-1,321-12 where he was the overall WR1 — there was a lot of debate about how good Evans really was.
My point is twofold. First is that Evans, too, had his limitations. The second, more important, point, is that anyone comparing any prospect’s downfield production to Mike Evans is fucking absurd. I have long been on the record as hating player comps, specifically because each player is his own unique blend of traits, and it’s subtle degrees of how dominant they are that dictates whether they can win with those traits. The longer you think about it, the more you realize it’s undeniable that some studs’ best stylistic comps are duds, etc.
But the Travis Hunter discourse this offseason has reiterated to me how bad people are with uncertainty. This guy is a clear unicorn and people have been trying to put him in a box all offseason; there have been so many words wasted trying to figure out how the most unique player to enter the NFL in years is going to fit into the already-established structures of the league, like things can’t evolve or be different for him at all. It doesn’t matter that he was already a unicorn last year by winning the Heisman at the NCAA level doing the two-way thing; we have to pretend like it will be shocking for him to do something else unprecedented at the next level. (It’s literally the most likely outcome, is what I’m saying. Get used to the idea that he’s going to do some never-before-seen things.)
Anyway, people make comps because they lack imagination, and have a need to categorize things they haven’t seen yet. But you can’t comp a specific trait of a guy to someone who is superhuman at that trait, and then denigrate him for it!
And let’s be clear: Mike Evans is one of the 10 best WRs of all time at earning targets downfield and then converting those into yards. It’s probably top five, but I’m not going to push it. When I say converting here, I want to be clear I’m not including YAC — most air yards conversion stats like RACR are total receiving yards divided by total air yards, but I’m saying (receiving yards minus YAC) divided by total air yards, i.e. just whether you catch the ball and convert the actual air yards. I can think of two WRs I’d definitely take over Evans in this particular skill — Calvin Johnson and Randy Moss — and then I think Evans has to be in the conversation. Again, it’s this combination of consistently earning that volume, and then also converting it, not just one or the other.
Does that mean I think Evans is better than Julio Jones? No. And Julio might be better at this skill, too. But Julio also has a whole bunch of other skills that made him an elite WR — that dude is what I’d call well-rounded, absolutely. Evans basically wasn’t. This is what’s so crazy! My point is that Evans is super unique, not just because of how productive he always has been, but because he was a dominant collegiate producer then a dominant NFL producer through his entire career basically because of one singular trait — an ability to win downfield targets and then catch them — and we’re going to compare a rookie prospect… to that fucking trait? I apologize for my language on Easter Sunday, but what are we doing here?
Anyway, I want to circle back to what McMillan will actually become. Maybe he’s 60% or 70% likely to actually profile like this at the next level, but there is a really strong production profile here that isn’t dependent on “gimme” stuff around the line of scrimmage, and the one flaw everyone keeps referencing is something that is a bit confusing. Circling all the way back to the London comp, McMillan is an inch taller and a few pounds lighter than London, and he doesn’t really look like London stylistically, to me at least. He looks like a young A.J. Green, who by the way was a stud in fantasy in his early years. He may not have Green’s downfield profile, and I understand the London comp when we’re trying to talk about the specific ways he wins and gets production, but my point is just that if we do want to consider McMillan’s ability to out-perform his downfield profile in a different type of NFL setting than his college situation, I’m encouraged by ways his body type might help.
The other thing is he’s very young as a three-year early declare who just turned 22 this month. He doesn’t necessarily have the deep speed you’re looking for, but he could still get better. If he starts to develop some of those WR traits like “late hands” that can help guys be more productive on downfield 50/50 balls, that wouldn’t be shocking. Broadly, I’m impressed by his production profile to this point, and I’ve just seen too many times where the ways we’ve looked at individual profiles haven’t necessarily translated. Typically that means a guy not being as good as his profile indicated at the next level, but there are absolutely examples of players being better at the next level than we expected, because of contextual reasons in the profile we couldn’t see at the time. And to me, something like a small sample of downfield success in a situation where that was deemphasized is something to try to properly contextualize.
Why I’m not doing a bunch more TPRR notes
Now I want to be clear. I don’t think I have some insight into McMillan that the analysts I’ve been referring to do not. These guys are way more prepared to comment on McMillan than I am, and they are really, really good at breaking this stuff down. It’s super fun for me to step back and be a consumer a little bit on some stuff that I don’t dig into as deep, because I don’t typically consume much other fantasy content at other times of the calendar.
Pat actually asked me a few weeks back if I was going to do my TPRR piece that I did last year, and this was going to be that piece, but I never really got deep enough into it. Why? Because I read last year’s intro, and I cracked up at it. I kind of need to copy and paste it.
One of the things with my recent NFL posts on TPRR is that they aren’t really TPRR posts at all. I’ve kind of been laughing at myself a bit for that branding, since it’s pretty boring, and I should have given it some kind of flashier name that more easily defined it as deep research. As I’ve written, I just use TPRR as my foundational stat to then discuss each player’s specific profile. In those discussions, I’m considering their usage within their offense, scheme, coaching, their teammate situation, and anything else I deem relevant. It would more accurately be described as a process built from my work with the stats in real time while writing Stealing Signals, and my work with the film while watching nearly all of the NFL games from a given season, a process which then gives me an intimate knowledge of the 32 NFL teams and how I believe they operate and then how that also impacts the players and the stats they put up.
I’m recounting that process because of the realization that I can do none of that for college players. I don’t have any of that real-time research to draw on. During the season, I watch my Washington Huskies, but I otherwise don’t catch a ton of college ball, and I’m often surprised myself when the season winds down and I’ve only seen some of the key teams maybe once, or not even at all. Saturday is just one of the few days of the week where I can spend some time with family and not have my life revolve around football. I’d love to watch more college ball, but it’s just not practical for me as a father of two to follow both the NFL and college football during the season, at the level I’d need to.
…
As I was considering how to approach my work here, the urge was to do exactly what I said at the top was such a problem. I could rank all these guys by TPRR and then fall victim to the same misapplication of the aggregate to the specific that I’ve written about before. That wouldn’t help you. At the same time, as I’ve always said, I do think there’s useful information to be gleaned by deconstructing the YPRR stat into its component parts, starting with the very stable skill of target earning. And looking at that stuff is probably the best research I can add to the broader discussion of WR prospects, and that’s where I’ve tried to focus my energy.
So this piece is me talking through that TPRR stuff, without the type of context I can apply to it when I discuss NFL players.
The whole impetus for that piece was the success of Puka Nacua in 2023, and how I was frustrated I didn’t see the exciting elements hiding in his TPRR profile. I’d say digging into the TPRR stuff got me more excited about Ladd McConkey last year, but it also made me question Brian Thomas Jr. a decent amount, and that’s why I said above I was laughing at this introduction. I was very clear that I don’t have enough information to draw strong conclusions, because I believe that you really need to immerse yourself in a player’s story — as well as the story of the team he played on — to draw key actionable takeaways.
(For what it’s worth, the 2025 WR prospect profiles are pretty boring from a TPRR lens. There’s nothing like Ladd or BTJ; Tre Harris is kind of fun but as a five-year guy, and I have real concerns about Matthew Golden, but I was viewing the TPRR stuff as potentially adding context that was missed elsewhere — as it arguably was with Nacua — and I’m not sure I see that with any of the 15+ WRs I looked at from the 2025 WR class, so I didn’t really think it warranted a writeup. I did talk about the WRs with Shawn on Stealing Bananas last week, though.)
For me personally, trying to establish my own very in-depth process when I don’t spend a lot of time with college football in the fall — for practicality reasons, because I more or less watch and write about every snap of the NFL season at a depth that renders also tracking college ball at a necessary depth untenable — just threatens to throw me off course.
So anyway, this is me wrapping up all my thoughts on McMillan by saying to largely ignore my McMillan commentary, other than as an example of ways I am trying to stay open-minded as I consume the very thorough and strong work that’s out there from some of the other fantastic analysts in the fantasy space. I’m very intrigued by this rookie class, and draft capital and landing spot will be two key notes for all these guys to round out their profiles later this week.
Rookie RBs primed to reshape fantasy landscape
I wrote this next section earlier this week, but I wanted to get it out, so I’m just tacking it on here. One suggestion I’ve seen around the RBs is this idea that adding this many strong profiles will lead to a lot of committees and ultimately fewer high-end fantasy workloads. The thought is that while the class is known to be strong — Shawn and I talked also talked about a bunch of exciting RB names on Stealing Bananas about 10 days ago — it might actually muddy the waters.
I have to disagree. First of all, committee backfields are simply a reality of the modern NFL. We’ve already been in that situation in many locations for several years. The exceptions are a few elite talents that aren’t going to be threatened by rookies, and then yes, some mediocre second-tier guys may no longer be carried by their workloads, but you shouldn’t mourn that there may be fewer Joe Mixon types. The impact of that on the broader fantasy landscape is just not that significant.
That’s because of the second and related point, which I’ve harped on for a few years now, that RB talent is misunderstood in fantasy. The ability of the consistently efficient backs to outproduce the expected-point values of their workloads is what makes fantasy stars. Jahmyr Gibbs might be the single best back in the NFL, and he shares a huge chunk of his backfield. He’s also one of the very best profiles for fantasy because his efficiency creates a strong floor of production even when David Montgomery is healthy, and then when Montgomery misses time, Gibbs explodes. Here are the per-game and full-season-pace numbers for Gibbs both with Montgomery on the field (“In Split”) and off (“Out of Split”) since the start of his career last year:
And that’s the third part of this argument, which is that RB volume is less predictable on the season-long level than the market believes. This idea was more or less the basis for the original RB Dead Zone research, and it’s why I’ve attacked the types of backs that get projected into big workloads that they more or less can’t actually realize — or are extreme longshots to realize — either because they aren’t good enough, they get hurt, or some combination of the two.
So yes, this rookie class will make it more difficult to project 250 touches to a few backs that maybe were never likely to actually realize that type of a workload over a four-month regular season, anyway. But again, I don’t believe that is a significant impact on the broader fantasy landscape.
And the tradeoff is very exciting. What it will provide us with is a whole host of new players who could — if attrition allows them to consolidate the backfield like Gibbs in Detroit at times — put displayed efficiency into a high-volume role for stretches of massive point-scoring potential. For as much as we hone in on the elite backs who do stuff like what Saquon Barkley was able to pull off last year, those shorter stretches of high-end scoring from guys you didn’t have to draft in the early rounds are also extremely crucial to fantasy, creating the potential for those Frankenstein RB slots on your rosters that can, if not fully replicate, at least contend with the top-scoring backs.
I put this logic in action a little bit yesterday, when I made a dynasty trade in a rookie draft that’s already underway. At the 1.02, I moved off Omarion Hampton, who looks like a workhorse every-down stud, to trade back to 1.04 (which also meant losing out on McMillan, but my team is much deeper at WR and needs impact RB swings), where I took Treveyon Henderson. Henderson has been called the Jahmyr Gibbs of the class as an explosive guy who was in a timeshare for Ohio State last year, but his draft capital has been rising, and it seems possible he might even go before Hampton.
Hampton has some real workhorse potential, and looks awesome on tape, but while I think Hampton likely belongs in a tier above Henderson, I was able to move onto a few different smaller bets by acquiring some additional draft capital (both in 2025 and 2026), and Henderson seems like the type of RB who has the potential to have some really interesting spurts of production, despite maybe not being projected for as many overall touches — and thus fantasy points — as Hampton will be (all of this is dependent on landing spot, obviously, and that uncertainty added to my willingness to trade back).
Anyway, go check out that pod I recorded with Shawn for more on the RBs, and then I’ll have a lot more on the RBs after the draft, because draft capital and landing spot are so, so crucial at that position.
On Thursday, I’ll be on the annual Ship Chasing draft stream with Pat and Pete and a ton of guests, so come hang out as we digest the first round! Otherwise, you may not hear from me until after the draft, but I’ll catch ya next time!