Determining Most Comparable Prospects: Part Three

Kyle Pollock Posted On June 14, 2016

Player comparisons are constantly used in the fantasy football community. It seems every year, there is a new running back prospect who is “the best prospect since Adrian Peterson”, a small receiver who reminds people of Antonio Brown, or a quarterback who is reminiscent of Andrew Luck. While these comps are commonly used, very few players can actually live up to them. The same comparisons are commonly made with incoming college freshman to current or recent college superstars. Since I play in many devy leagues, I thought it would be good to actually know which players actually were most comparable to each other. With the help of Ryan Berger, I decided to use the K Nearest Neighbor algorithm to determine each player’s most comparable players based on athletic testing numbers. I’ll be outlining some players comps over this series.

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For reference I used all data from the Opening from 2013-2016, so some players might not be in the set. Notable players missing include Laquon Treadwell, Josh Doctson, Corey Coleman, Will Fuller, and Leonard Fournette.

KD Cannon

cannon

K.D. Cannon has had two phenomenal seasons at Baylor, and looks to be taking over as the Bears top receiver next season. He is one of the premier deep threats in the nation, posting an average of 17.5 yards per catch over the course of his career. While he is obviously a very fast and explosive player, Cannon did not test like one. In fact, his 4.58 forty time at the Opening is horrendous for a player that only weighed 162 pounds at the time. This means that Cannon’s most comparable player are all very light players who did not test well athletically. Surprisingly enough, a few of these players (including Cannon) have had great success at the college level.

One of these players is Calvin Ridley, who burst onto the season during his freshman campaign at Alabama and emerged as the Tide’s top receiving threat during their national championship run. He was considered the top receiver in his recruiting class, and certainly lived up to the billing by accumulating 1,045 receiving yards and seven touchdowns last season. Much like Cannon, Ridley tested pretty poorly. Ridley actually posted a lower SPARQ score than Cannon, (96.78 vs 92.7), but did run a 4.54 forty at 169 pounds. While Ridley was amazing last season, I think it’s fair for us to tamper expectations slightly based on this comp. Ridley is extremely old (he is only six months younger than former Alabama standout Amari Cooper), and a below average athlete. While Cannon is a good player it’s hard to see him ever becoming more than a deep threat for a team, and this could also be the case with Ridley.

Terry Godwin is actually Cannon’s closest comp, and the Georgia sophomore will look to build on a promising freshman campaign. With the graduation of Malcolm Mitchell, Godwin will look to take over as the Bulldogs top wide receiver this season. He was actually the Bulldogs second leading receiver last season, but He finished the season strong, earning the MVP honors in the TaxSlayer.com Bowl against Penn State. Godwin had four receptions for 34 yards and a touchdown, and also threw for a touchdown. In his previous game against Georgia Tech, he had eight receptions for 78 yards. I’m expecting Godwin to have a breakout season this year, and he could become one of the top receivers in his class.

Much like Cannon, Artavis Scott has had solid production during his first two years at Clemson. He has had over 900 yards and six touchdowns in both years, but saw his yards per catch drop by three yards last season. He is extremely versatile, as he can play inside, outside, or in the slot. Scott is an explosive player with the ball in the open field, excels on underneath routes, screens, and fly/jet sweeps, and also has good hands. I’d like to see him run a more diverse route tree, and frankly was disappointed that he didn’t step up in a bigger way once star receiver Mike Williams was injured in the first game of the season. I don’t see Scott as a very high ranking NFL prospect, as he is currently my WR17 in next year’s draft.

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