NFL Draft: NFL Combine Results vs Fantasy Production for Wide Receivers
Don't get me wrong. I love the combine. I love seeing my priors confirmed in real time. Who doesn't? Now, is the combine indicative of future NFL success?
It's easy to get enamored with the workout warriors who run the fastest and jump the highest.
We keep track of all the NFL combine workout metrics here at RotoWire and have a robust database that goes back 20 years. From all those thousands of data points, we can start drawing some conclusions.
I created an interactive table below with 100 wide receiver prospects from 2019 to 2026. It gives an overall size-adjusted athletic score for each of those players. Not every receiver prospect participated in each drill so this score rewards guys who tested well in more drills. If there are any omissions, let me know in the comments, and I'll add them into the table.
NFL Combine Data Analysis
What do you notice about the Top 10? The big thing, for me, is that there's only one bona fide star from that group (Ja'Marr Chase (Pro Day)). The rest of the athletic standouts either have too short of a sample to make a definitive call on whether they're good or bad, and others are busts.
We don't want to take it too far in the other direction and start arguing that poor athletic testing is #good actually. But it's important to realize that the combine is only a piece of the overall prospect profile puzzle. We're getting more and more combine opt-outs that give us incomplete pictures of who these players are as athletes.
We also have current stars in the league who did not test as standout athletes at the combine or even at their pro days, like Puka Nacua or Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Heck, you look at the best ball ADP right now and analyze the top receivers, they're not exactly popping in this chart.
| Player | ADP | Athletic Score |
|---|---|---|
| Puka Nacua | 3.2 | 30.1 |
| Ja'Marr Chase | 3.7 | 93.6 (Pro Day) |
| Jaxon Smith-Njigba | 5.2 | 37.8 (Pro Day) |
| CeeDee Lamb | 8.4 | 45.7 |
| Amon-Ra St. Brown | 8.8 | 55.8 (Pro Day) |
| Justin Jefferson | 13.2 | 67.5 |
| Malik Nabers | 17.6 | N/A |
| Drake London | 18.1 | N/A |
| George Pickens | 23.0 | 45.4 |
| Nico Collins | 23.2 | 73.2 |
TL;DR: A good 40 time doesn't guarantee that you're going to be a good NFL receiver.
2026 Rookie Wide Receivers
Let's dig into this year's combine results and zoom out to see what this class is bringing to the table from an athleticism perspective.
- Jeff Caldwell: Caldwell's combine performance is going to get him drafted. Does it mean he's going to be good? Time will tell. He was a three-year star at Lindenwood College in Missouri before punching up a weight class at Cincinnati in 2025, where he caught an impressive six touchdowns on 32 receptions. Still, he had a subpar catch rate despite playing with Brendan Sorsby as his quarterback. The tools are there with Caldwell, but we'll have to see how teams view him. If they're sold enough on him, he could be the Isaac TeSlaa of this year's draft.
- Carnell Tate: Tate's a good test for his article because he came into the combine ranked as a consensus Top 15 pick and Top 3 receiver in this class. He checked in at 6-foot-2, 192 pounds and ran a 4.53 40. It doesn't seem to have hurt his stock much, even if people made a big deal out of his underwhelming 40 time and lack of other testing. There's also the weird disagreement about the 40 time that I'll just leave here...
- Skyler Bell: Bell is the Goldilocks example for this section. He had standout production and strong athletic testing. He turned the corner in college when he transferred to UConn from Wisconsin and caught 151 passes and 18 touchdowns over his two years in Storrs. He's a little over-aged for a rookie as he'll turn 24 this summer, but that's not as uncommon anymore in this new era of NIL and the COVID year keeping guys in school longer.
