It's tomorrow, right? I don't know how much more Lazard can do to help himself after his Senior Bowl and Combine experience. But it will be a big day for Lanning and KCM and whoever else will be participating.
There are a lot of draft pundits still doubting his athleticism and some teams still questioning if he should move to tight end. I would think he needs to improve on his posted numbers from the combine, as well as running better than a 6.7 3cone, a 4.2 or better 20 yd shuttle, and an 11.3 or better 60 yd shuttle. Anything less than those and the tight end talk wont go away. It seems like people are having trouble ranking him. The guys that to do analytics love him for his production and athletic testing so far, so they have him as one of the top 5/-0 receivers in the draft. Then you get the guys that seem to really only care about film and they have him all the way back at 15-20.
Personally I do not see it, when you watch his film it seems like half of the passes thrown to him are in a position where he had to make a play on the ball just to catch it, he wasn't hit in stride very often. I have done my own analysis using the top 20 nfl wide receiver seasons of the last 5 years, and where those players were when they came out for the draft from a production, size, and athleticism stand point. My caveats being that not all the pro days are done so I can't complete the athleticism numbers, and I am in no way qualified to do this outside of an amatuer level.
That being said, when looking just at the numbers, the only receivers in this draft that match profiles of players that had top 20 nfl receiving seasons in the last 5 years are:
James Washington
Courtland Sutton
Michael Gallup
Allen Lazard
Trey Quinn
Cedrick Wilson
Chirstian Kirk
So from a sort of predictive analysis stand point the above are really the only receivers worth targeting in the draft.
