2023 Dynasty Fantasy Football Rookie Prospect: Kayshon Boutte, WR LSU
Our NFL rookie profile series continues with this analysis of 2023 NFL Draft Prospect Kayshon Boutte, WR from LSU. 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.
Kayshon Boutte’s college career was quite the rollercoaster from the moment he stepped foot on LSU’s campus. The former five-star recruit was the third-ranked wide receiver in the class of 2020 and was expected to be the next great receiver to call Baton Rouge home.
Boutte burst onto the scene as a devy darling during the COVID-19 shortened season where he took the SEC by storm. However, his value steadily declined over the past two years thanks to injuries, off-the-field concerns, and a downright terrible NFL Combine performance.
Should Boutte continue his tumble down rookie rankings or is it time to buy the dip?
The Stats
Courtesy of Sports Reference.
Boutte led LSU in receiving yards as a true freshman on a team that included second-round pick Terrace Marshall Jr, and future 1,000-yard receiver Trey Palmer. Boutte was putting together a nice freshman campaign before he went nuclear down the stretch with three straight 100-yard games, including an exclamation point on the season during the finale against Ole Miss in which he had 14 receptions for 308 yards and three touchdowns. The season demonstrated the player Boutte could become, and all of the advanced metrics loved him. He posted a breakout age of 18.3 which is in the 98th percentile. He also posted a team-best 2.38 yards per route run while owning 23.54 percent of the team’s passing production.
His sophomore season started even better as he accumulated 38 catches, 509 yards, and nine touchdowns through the first six games. However, an ankle injury in mid-October cut his promising season short and was followed by two separate off-season surgeries. That summer also saw LSU go through major changes as a program. They brought in a new head coach, Brian Kelly, and a new quarterback, Jayden Daniels.
It’s unclear whether it was the ankle surgeries, the new coach, or the new quarterback, but something caused Boutte to have the worst year of his career in 2022. He had only 48 catches for 538 yards and two touchdowns in the fall. He had career lows in market share, 14.27%, yards per team pass attempt, 1.12, and yards per route run, 1.49.
The Film
Watching Boutte on film is quite an experience because you never know what you’re going to get. Sometimes he looks like the best player on the field and you ask yourself why he isn’t the undisputed WR1 in the class. Other times it looks like it’s the first time he’s ever stepped foot on a football field.
His game against Florida this past season is a perfect encapsulation of the Boutte experience. He is an incredible playmaker and he flashed his ability to make plays with the ball in his hands. I think his greatest skill is his ability to gain yards after the catch. However, he does not run the most complicated route tree and most of his damage is done on crossers and other simple routes.
While Boutte looks with the ball in his hands, the problem sometimes is getting it there. According to Pro Football Focus, Boutte had a career drop rate of 11% which is well above average. Just as his ability after the catch was on display against the Gators, so were Boutte’s drop problems. On two separate plays, the quarterback puts the ball right in his hands and he simply drops it.
The other issue with getting the ball into Boutte’s hands is that he has an incredibly small catch radius thanks to his lack of size and athleticism. This is why he struggles to make catches downfield and instead thrives on underneath crossing routes.
Measurables
Boutte’s combine performance did not inspire much confidence in his athletic profile. He measured in smaller than what he was listed at LSU at only 5 ’11’’ and 195 lbs. While his size was uninspiring, his explosiveness testing was the bigger concern. According to Kent Lee Platte’s RAS system, Boutte earned a 4.74 which means his athletic profile falls in the 47th percentile of all receivers.
Courtesy of RAS Football.
During interviews leading up to the testing, Boutte was confident in his ability to run a 4.3-second 40-yard dash. While a time of 4.5 is not exactly running through mud, it fell well short of the presumptuous claims he made at the podium.
The biggest red flag was his complete lack of any explosiveness. Boutte recorded a 29-inch vertical, which was the lowest number of any skill position player at the combine this year, and ranks in the fifth percentile of all receivers in the RAS database. His broad jump is also not going to win any awards and was historically below average.
Boutte’s small stature, lack of explosiveness, and simply average speed makes his catch radius incredibly small. This is worrisome for a wide receiver and was on display in college where he struggled throughout his career making contested catches. According to PFF, Boutte never had a season with a “Contested Catch Percentage” above 50%, and was 12 for 36 in Contested Catch opportunities for his career.
All of this confirms what was seen on the film above. Boutte struggles to catch the ball downfield with defensive backs surrounding him because his catch radius is so small, leading to his issues in contested situations. However, when he can catch it cleanly on a crossing route, he is very dangerous with the ball in his hands.
Dynasty Value
Courtesy of DLF’s February ADP.
Boutte was the WR4 in DLF’s February ADP following the end of the college football season and was routinely being selected at the end of the first round, or the beginning of the second round, in 12-team leagues. However, his combine performance caused Boutte to fall an entire round in rookie drafts, and he now sits as the WR8. I think he may even fall further than that over the next month; in the last two rookie mocks I’ve done Boutte was selected as WR9 and WR10 and fell all the way until the middle of the third round.
Courtesy of DLF’s March ADP.
For most rookies who are not part of that elite top-of-the-class group, draft capital is an incredibly important point of discussion, but I think it will be even more crucial for a player like Boutte.
There are so many question marks surrounding him as a prospect, and we as a dynasty community don’t know how the NFL will view him. Are the two ankle injuries a lingering problem and has he fully recovered? Why did everyone question his body language and commitment during his entire junior season? Why did he decide he was returning to school only to pull a 180 two weeks later and declare for the draft seemingly out of the blue? (We might know the answer to that one but won’t be discussing it here.)
Regardless, I think how the NFL perceives Kayshon Boutte should largely impact how we in the dynasty community value him. If NFL teams draft him in the second round and are willing to take a chance on him due to his freshman season, then so should dynasty managers, and his ADP will hold steady in that WR6-8 range.
However, if he falls into the late third round, or even into day three, that could be an indication that the NFL is not willing to invest the draft capital in a player with those concerns. That would be a major red flag for dynasty managers, but there has to be a time when we buy the dip on a player as talented as Boutte. He’s shown us how good he can be with the ball in his hands, and if he falls into the third round of superflex rookie drafts, I’d rather be selecting him than players like Tank Dell, Xavier Hutchinson, or Chase Brown.
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