The 2018 NFL Draft Prospect series breaks down draft-eligible players, highlighting their college production as well as their NFL potential. It’s important for daily fantasy players to know about NFL rookies before they’ve played a down of professional football because they are among the most misvalued assets in all of DFS. People who know NFL rookies have a significant DFS edge. The draft will be held at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, TX, from April 26-28.
This piece is on Southern Mississippi wide receiver Korey Robertson, who has declared early for the draft. For the total list of all players leaving school early, see our underclassmen tracker.
For more on all the other receivers in the class, see our 2018 NFL draft wide receiver rankings.
Updated as of Mar. 8.
Redshirt Junior | 6’1″ and 212 Pounds | Born June 22, 1995 (Age: 22) | Projection: Rounds 4-5
Combine numbers: 40-yard: 4.56 sec | bench reps: 13 | 3-cone: DNP | 20-yard shuttle: DNP | vertical: 34 in | broad: 123 in
Robertson has almost no hype right now, and he wasn’t invited to the East-West Shrine Game or the Senior Bowl, which means that he’s perhaps the most undervalued receiver in the draft. The NFL tends not to be high on Group of Five prospects in general, and Robertson was just a three-star recruit in high school, but because of his style of play all of that might not matter once he gets to the NFL. Robertson is very much the discount Davante Adams or maybe even Justin Blackmon of the 2018 draft: He’s thick and physical, and his “my ball” mentality translated to significant college production.
Although he doesn’t have the gaudy raw stats that Adams and Blackmon had in their high-volume spread systems, Robertson has impressed with the Golden Eagles. Although he redshirted his first year and played as a depth receiver as a freshman and sophomore, totaling 51 receptions for 637 yards and six touchdowns, as a junior he broke out in his first full season as a starter. With two quarterbacks who failed collectively to complete even 57 percent of their passes, he turned 76 receptions into 1,106 yards, 12 touchdowns, and 35.4 and 50.0 percent of the team’s receiving yards and scores. That market share production in particular is smoking. Robertson is unlikely to be selected before Day 3 (if he’s drafted at all), but his odds of becoming a reliable NFL contributor will almost certainly be higher than those implied by his draft capital.
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Matthew Freedman is the Editor-in-Chief of FantasyLabs. He has a dog and sometimes a British accent. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he’s known only as The Labyrinthian.
Photo Credit: John Glaser-USA TODAY Sports
