Jaelen Strong: Bargain or Booby Prize

Doug Green

strong

Editor’s Note: This is a Dynasty Scouts exclusive article. Our Dynasty Scouts section focuses on the stars of tomorrow, with a laser focus on High School recruits and College players who look to have the talent to be future assets in dynasty leagues and have value today in devy leagues. Dynasty Scouts articles are found in our Premium Content.

People argue whether Alabama’s Amari Cooper or West Virginia’s Kevin White should be the first wideout drafted. Mock drafters are trying to reconnect Louisville’s Davante Parker with his former quarterback Teddy Bridgewater in Minnesota. Draft analysts and NFL decision makers are trying to weigh if Dorial Green-Beckham’s outstanding talent is worth the potential risk of his myriad of off-field issues.

Meanwhile, Arizona State’s Jaelen Strong is, well, he’s just kind of there in the first round. Don’t get me wrong, no one is saying he isn’t worth of a first round selection in the 2015 NFL Draft, it’s just that, well, no one really seems to be that excited about him either. You don’t hear people talking about moving up to try and get him. He’s not the first guy, but he’s not the last either. You hear buzz around players like Florida State’s Rashad Greene and USC’s Nelson Agholor and how they can sneak into the first round. Strong is just kind of stuck in the middle.

Why isn’t there more buzz around him? He has good measurables and strong tape. Like I said earlier, no one is saying he’s not a first-round guy. Maybe his agent or PR guy isn’t working very hard. Maybe prognosticators and fantasy players become jaded thanks to stellar draft classes the past couple of years.

Let’s take a deeper look at Strong and see if someone is getting a steal or if he’s just a really good, but not great, player.

Strong’s measurables are exactly what you are looking for out of a first-round wide receiver. At the NFL Combine he came in at 6’2” and 217 pounds. He has nine-inch hands and 32.5 inch arms. Strong ran a 4.44 40-yard dash and had a 123-inch broad jump. He actually had the highest vertical jump of the wideouts, going 42 inches. He looked smooth and polished in the drill portion and didn’t drop a ball in the gauntlet.

So he looks the part, as they say. He displayed plenty of athleticism and basic pass catching skills when he was tested.

Moving on to the game tape might shed some more light on Strong’s abilities.

[am4show have=’g1;’ guest_error=’sub_message’ user_error=’sub_message’ ]

Let’s start with his game against UCLA this season. On Strong’s first reception of the game, the quarterback rolls to his right and throws a ball to Strong’s inside shoulder, except Strong is looking for the ball going outside. He twists himself back against the grain to reel in the catch for a first down.

At the 4:57 mark of the first quarter of that same game, Strong gives a stutter off the line to beat press coverage. The quarterback, who was the backup playing due to injury, threads the needle between the corner catching up on the outside and the safety closing from the middle. Strong catches the ball with his hands over his inside shoulder before being brought to the turf.

Strong also moves the chains. In the UCLA broadcast, one of the announcers mentioned that coming into the game, 14 of his 19 catches to that point were for a first down.

In the bowl game against Duke from January, back with usual quarterback Taylor Kelly, you see a couple of things that epitomize Strong. One, towards the end of the first half, Kelly throws a bomb to Strong down the middle of the field that Strong cannot catch up to. The analyst commented that Strong needed “another gear to catch up to that ball.” That reinforces what we saw with the 4.44 40-time, that he has good speed, but not that high-performance top gear.

At the same time, you see Kelly’s comfort with Strong and his ability to hand catches in traffic and back shoulder throws. The two have a rapport similar to what I saw with Oregon State’s Sean Mannion and Brandin Cooks two seasons ago.

Against Utah on 2nd and 9 with less than two minutes left in a tie ballgame, Strong goes up and snags a ball that’s just past the outstretched fingertips of the cornerback, then turns in mid-air to get his feet down in bounds and pick up a few extra yards while tiptoeing the sideline for a 26-yard gain.

So we’ve established that Strong as the measurable athletic skills, the size and the talent to be a first-round player. We’ve seen visual evidence that he is an excellent football player. He has productive college numbers, with back-to-back 1,100-yard seasons and 17 career touchdowns. So the next step is to examine his drawbacks, where he doesn’t excel.

As we’ve already touched on, Strong is not what you would consider a true burner. Yes, he clocked 4.44, but teams were not afraid of him running away from them. He is what NFL Network’s Mike Mayock calls “quicker than fast” meaning that he is quick in and out of his cuts and breaks, but doesn’t have that top-end, track star speed. The Sun Devils played to his strengths, designing route combinations and throwing him back-shoulder fades, where he excels. Plus, we’ve seen plenty of guys who weren’t burners have long, productive careers in the NFL.

Another thing not in Strong’s favor is his ability to block. Don’t get me wrong, he tries. He gets in people’s way. He gets his hands on them. But at the end of the day, he’s not clearing a ton of space for either his running backs or his fellow wide receivers. I’m of the opinion that as a rookie, the more little things you can do, the more chance you have of seeing playing time. That said, this shouldn’t be a major obstacle for him to get playing time either.

NFL.com’s Lance Zierlein also noted that he is not the twitchiest athlete and takes long strides to get up to speed.

While these things are negatives, there is nothing on that list that would keep him from being at least a serviceable player, if not a star.

So why isn’t Jaelen Strong talked about more? I think at the end of the day it’s a couple of things.

First, he does have the disadvantage of being in a loaded receiver class. I think in other years (other than 2014) he would get more notoriety and be hailed as one of the “safer” options in the draft. That of course, leads to the next point.

Second, he’s pretty good at a lot of things, but doesn’t really have an area where he blows you away with wow plays. His game doesn’t have a lot of sexy to it. There’s not a lot of deep throws. There aren’t a lot of breakaway runs. There is a few flashy back-shoulder catches, but those have become commonplace in today’s NFL.

I still think he’s worth taking in the first round of your dynasty rookie draft, though he’s clearly destined for the mid to late portion of it thanks to his high floor. The best comparison I can make for him is actually a baseball player that hits .260, with 15-20 homers, 75-80 RBI and 10-12 steals. That’s fine, it’s sufficient. You want that guy on your team, you might even trade for him, but he’ll never be a cornerstone piece. I think of him as an Eric Decker-type player, though Strong had a better 40 time.

However, if he slips a bit in the first round and lands somewhere with a good quarterback that can anticipate and throw him open, Strong could become a PPR darling with his good hands. On NFL.com Zierlein compared him to Dwayne Bowe. If he landed in a Kansas City, with Alex Smith, and took over that Bowe role with Maclin now there as the deep threat, that becomes a nice, little pairing that could boost his dynasty value. Compare that to Cleveland, where he would be the main threat, but without a deep complement and poor quarterback play, he may not excel.

His landing spot will determine how highly you should be selecting him in your upcoming drafts.

[/am4show]

doug green
Latest posts by Doug Green (see all)