2020 NFL Draft Prospect – Denzel Mims, WR Baylor
Our NFL rookie profile series continues with this analysis of 2020 NFL Draft Prospect Denzel Mims, WR from Baylor. We will continue to provide you with these in-depth rookie profiles and a ton of other fantasy football rookie analysis right up through the NFL Draft. Stay tuned, and stay ahead of your league!
Wide receiver might be the hardest position to peg in rookie drafts. Most of them don’t break out during their rookie seasons. Situations matter when you take into account a player’s air yards and quality of targets they see on a consistent basis. Those opportunities make it easier for them to transition from college athlete to a desirable fantasy asset.
Denzel Mims is a very interesting prospect. He has all the tools along with a very flashy reel of highlights illuminated by many contested catches. His value is diluted by this deep rookie class. He’s a player who could see his dynasty value explode in the next 18 months. The sky is the limit for Mims, and his NFL career will be a wild ride for his dynasty owners.
THE STATS
Statistics from sports-reference.com.
After a slow freshman season, Mims took off in 2017 as a sophomore catching 61 passes for 1,087 yards and eight touchdowns. He had five 100-yard games and his best performance came against Oklahoma where he caught 11 passes for 192 yards and three touchdowns. His 34.78 percent market share and 33.1 percent dominator rating of Baylor’s passing production led to him breaking out at the age of 19.
We saw the offense incorporate former Tennessee star, Jalen Hurd, into the mix the following year. Hurd cannibalized some of Mims’ production. However, he still managed to catch 55 balls for 794 yards while seeing a 16.9 percent target share. Even though he had more competition for targets his overall ownership of the passing production was still well above average. He owned a 21.06 percent share of the team’s passing production and a 28.7 percent dominator rating which measures the ownership of both the team’s yards and touchdowns together.
Mims wanted to leave Baylor with a bang. He had the best season of his career, surpassing the 1,000-yard mark while crossing the goal line 12 times. He had four 100-yard games and four multi-touchdown games. This was another year where he was a key piece to Baylor’s offense as he owned a 28.32 percent market share of the passing offense, a 47.83 percent share of the passing touchdowns and a 38.1 percent dominator rating.
Overall, Mims had a very successful career at Baylor. He nearly hit the 3,000-yard threshold. From his sophomore to his senior season, he was well above average in dominator rating. His sophomore season marks his age-19 breakout season which ranks in the 68th percentile among all wide receiver prospects.
Since he stayed at Baylor for his senior season, Mims needed to take an even larger ownership of the team’s offensive production which he did by almost hitting the 40 percent mark in dominator rating. His college production competes with any wide receiver in this draft class. With him being a high producer with an early breakout age, the chances are higher for Mims to have a smooth transition to the NFL game.
THE FILM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0mfOkMxZ6M
The video clip posted above is from his 2019 game against Texas where he caught seven passes for 125 yards and one touchdown. This is a good game to watch because he gets a lot of action by seeing ten targets. It is also a glimpse of him playing an out-of-conference game against a power-five school.
There’s a lot to like about Mims’ game. He has a good release off the line of scrimmage and will use his burst off the line and his footwork to get into the back pocket of the defender. There’s plenty of burst in his game to eat the cushion against stay coverage.
He’s strong off the line of scrimmage and does a good job of using his hands to maneuver the defender while getting pressed. He can also manipulate tight coverage with his strong upper body and quick footwork.
There are two different stories to tell when it comes to him breaking off routes in the short to intermediate parts of the field. He does a very good job of sinking his hips at the top of his route and snapping the route off towards the quarterback while running curl and hitch routes. He’s very urgent and wants to create separation as quickly as possible. This allowed him to achieve 2.36 yards per route run last season. Unfortunately, he lacks lateral quickness and doesn’t move well in a phone booth. His urgency minimizes the defender’s ability to crash down whenever he attempts to make a lateral cut.
Mims executes great downfield speed and can push the defense once he hits top gear. Defenders have to remain disciplined at all times or they will get burnt by his deceptive speed. To the untrained eye, he appears slower than what he tests on tape, but that’s mainly due to him getting physical with the defensive back during the early stages of his route.
Denzel Mims crosses the DBs face and fully extends overhead for the touchdown catch. pic.twitter.com/1SmuwFL2U2
— Bruce Matson (@MetricScout) January 1, 2020
If ball skills is an important trait for your wide receiver evaluations, then Mims is going to be high in your rankings. He converted 20 contested catches last year and established a 48.8 percent contested catch rate. Magic tends to happen when the ball is in transit. He has the ability to pluck balls out of the air with his bare hands with a defender breathing down his neck. It doesn’t matter, the ball can be over his head or a few feet away from him and Mims will still figure out a way to catch the ball.
Part of the reason why he can effortlessly snag balls out of the air is his large catch radius. He’s an explosive athlete who gains a few inches to either side when he’s boxing out a defender to make a grab. His anticipation for the ball makes it easier for him to time his leap to catch the ball at its highest point. Mims has strong instincts and reacts really well to the ball’s flight pattern, making him really tough to guard if the ball is placed perfectly to where he can catch it.
THE MEASURABLES
Mims won the Scouting Combine. His performance in Indianapolis greatly improved his draft stock. He ran a 4.38-second 40-yard dash at 6-foot-3 and 207 pounds which equated to a 114.53 size-adjusted speed score. That ranks in the 95th percentile among all wide receiver prospects. He also tested with a 38.5-inch vertical and a 131-inch broad jump which means he’s a very explosive athlete.
Most of the wide receivers at the Combine failed at the three-cone. Mims didn’t follow suit. Instead, he dominated with a 6.66 three-cone. His testing proves that he has the short-area quickness to separate from defenders in small spaces.
Mockdraftable compares him athletically to Stephen Hill who was a super athlete out of Georgia Tech. It’s a very flattering comp for Mims considering Hill himself was comped athletically by Mockdraftable to Calvin Johnson and Julio Jones. If anything, we could gather from this listing that Mims could be garnered as a Mini-Megatron. To give you a fair warning, athletic metric correlations shouldn’t be used for predictive outcomes.
He’s also comped to former first-round pick DeVante Parker. Both players are comparable in size, but Mims is the better athlete. He’s faster and more explosive and has a much larger catch radius. The two players have some comparable on-field traits. They are both tacticians at beating defenders downfield to convert contested catches.
DYNASTY VALUE
As or right now, Mims is falling to the 13th round of startup drafts with a 157.83 ADP. Considering he’s a rookie with a lot of upside, we should see his value rise a few rounds within the next couple of months. With that being said, I’ve personally done a startup mock where he fell to the eighth round at 93 overall. I can see his startup cost rise a little higher from there between now and the end of the summer. If he gets drafted into a sweet landing spot, then we could see his dynasty value skyrocket.
Like many young wide receiver prospects, his dynasty value will be age-insulated. He should hold his value throughout the first couple years of his career, providing owners the opportunity to monitor progress before they decide whether they should hold for the long-term or sell to get out from under a tragic situation.
He will instantly vault into a must-get dynasty asset if he is semi-productive during his rookie season. Not all rookies transition instantly, but the tides shift when they do. Since their value are age-insulated and the value spikes could be insurmountable, it’s hard to pivot away from promising rookies wide receivers like Mims.
His rookie draft value is going to fluctuate between now and the end of the draft. He currently has a rookie ADP of 13. There’s a good chance he could elevate a few spots if he gains decent draft capital. His value could jump even further if he lands to a team with an efficient passing offense. Any other year, he would be an easy first-round pick. Since this season is stacked with top-shelf running backs, there are going to be a few good wide receivers get funneled to the early part of the second round.
CONCLUSION
Mims is a very good wide receiver and his prospect profile is almost flawless. He has the production and the athletic metrics to make him one of the top players in this year’s draft. Not only that, but he is proven to be a reliable playmaker on tape.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he develops into the most productive wide receiver from this year’s draft class. From that standpoint, he’s a value in the back half of the first round of rookie drafts. If anything, he is priced accordingly, because the risk is minimal. Mims should be in consideration to be ranked in the top five in everyone’s wide receiver rankings.
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