Rookie Profile: Travin Dural, WR LSU

Jacob Feldman

Travin Dural, Travin Dural, Travin Dural… When I was asked to put together a rookie profile on Dural, my mind kept going around and around thinking I knew that name from somewhere. I just couldn’t place it. Then I went over to my massive work in progress right now, my annual attempt to quantify all of the combine results and translate it into potential ceiling for players. I was looking through the list, all 60 players worth of it, and sitting right there, on the very bottom of the list was Dural. Meaning out of all of the receiver at the combine, my metric predicts that he has the lowest ceiling of all.

Now, the combine measurements are of course just one piece of the puzzle. They don’t tell the whole story. After all, players like Jarvis Landry had terrible combines and turned out to be pretty good players. It is definitely worth some investigation, so let’s take a closer look at Dural and try to get some perspective on what is there. Surely he can’t be the worst draft eligible receiver in this draft process as the metric suggests, right? Allow me to start with his production in college as we try to uncover what Dural brings to the table.

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Statistics from sports-reference.com.

Looking at his stats, the first thing that jumped out to me was the number of games played. He spent five years at LSU (he was a medical redshirt in 2012), but he only played a full slate of games once. He missed time for an assortment of injuries ranging from knee and hamstring issues to shoulder injuries. His one healthy season, 2014, was by far his most productive season. Though when you compare it to many of the other players in this year’s draft, it really does pale in comparison. 37 receptions for 758 yards isn’t terrible given LSU’s lack of a passing offense and run focused scheme, but it isn’t anything which is going to make you stand up and take notice.

One thing I did notice is the big plays. Even with a very down year in 2016, Dural still managed to average 17.2 yards per catch. That is a pretty big number. The only way you get that is if you are consistently getting behind defenses for some big plays. If we can figure out that the overall lack of production was largely due to scheme and injury, then maybe there is something here. Maybe he is a diamond in the rough who has a ton of ability, and it just wasn’t used properly by the LSU coaches on a regular basis. Maybe it is time to take a look at the physical traits.

How does he stack up when compared to others in college? Player Profiler is one of the best resources for answering that question effectively and efficiently.

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Taking a look at his Player Profiler page, we start to see a little bit about what I mentioned in the opening. Even when compared to other college receivers, Dural is at best very average and at his worst absolutely abysmal.  When you see someone who has burst scores, agility scores, and catch radius scores which are lower than the 5th percentile it is pretty terrible. Maybe he is someone who just doesn’t fit with this type of metric, so let’s take a look at another one. If we want a closer look at how he compares to the rest of the receivers throughout the history of the NFL draft, Mock Draftable is a great resource.

Unfortunately for Dural, this resource paints much the same picture as the last one. When the ends of your “web” on Mock Draftable look a lot more like one single point, you’re in a little bit a trouble. When you combine these two metrics with my own homegrown one that I mentioned in the opening parts of this article, you now have three different data points which don’t forecast a very positive result for Dural.

Maybe the combine was just a very, very bad day for him. It is possible, but he did run the 40 yard dash at his pro day and received the exact same time. Keep in mine, people typically test slightly faster at their pro days. He also elected to stay with his combine numbers in the other drills, which tells me he feels they were a fairly accurate measure, and he wasn’t going to improve much if at all.

Well, maybe he is just one of those guys who players the game faster than what they test in the drills. What does he look like when he’s in pads and playing the game? Do a quick search for some highlights or just take a look here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR451Dg7V3E

Now we can start to finally see a little bit of what some people like about him. Due to the scheme he played in and who else was playing around him, it is very difficult to get a great read on him while watching film. He does seem to have a knack for getting behind defenders even though his tested numbers aren’t very good. He is fortunate to have decent size as well at 6’1” and over 200 pounds, which you can see he uses fairly well to box people out and win at the point of the catch.

He does seem to be a little inconsistent with his routes and occasionally over run the ball when it is in the air, forcing him to cut back to the ball at the last minute at times. Even in the highlights, he did do a fair amount of double catching as well. So I don’t feel like he is a natural receiver, and his lack of body control and field awareness at times seems to suggest that as well.

Overall, I do think he plays a little faster than he tested. Unfortunately, even if he was significantly faster than tested he would just barely be making it back to the same level as most of his peers in the draft. He does have some nice size and seems to play with some toughness and a chip on his shoulder, but that is about it when it comes to nice things I can say about him. His injury history combined with a severe lack of production and some very limited athleticism makes me wonder if he will even be drafted. In terms of fantasy rosters, I see very little chance he will ever develop into a consistent starter on your team. I think you need to be looking elsewhere in the late rounds.

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jacob feldman