The DFS Prospects Bowl Guide series breaks down draft-eligible players in upcoming bowl games, highlighting their college production as well as their NFL potential.
Earlier this season I put out a piece on the DFS merits of NFL prospect evaluation. It’s important for DFS 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. If someone had told you in May to pay attention to Jamaal Williams, Samaje Perine, and Dede Westbrook as rookies, would that information have been worthwhile? Would it have gotten you to subscribe to FantasyLabs? (The answer should be “yes.”)
Keep an eye out for more installments of DFS Prospects Bowl Guide as we move further into bowl season.
- Part 1: Royce Freeman Looks Like a Future Star
- Part 2: Courtland Sutton Is a First-Round Receiver
- Part 3: Rashaad Penny Has NFL Workhorse Upside
Zaxby’s Heart of Dallas Bowl: Tuesday, Dec. 26
The Utah Utes (6-6) and West Virginia Mountaineers (7-5) face off at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, TX, to determine which of them is the less middling Power Five program. Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham has a 10-1 record in bowl games, and the Mountaineers will be without starting quarterback Will Grier (finger) and also their primary running back. Utah is just a -6.5 favorite, but the Utes could win by two touchdowns. Unfortunately for our purposes, the Utes are rather uninteresting.
David Sills: Wide Receiver, West Virginia
You remember in February of 2010 when then-Southern California head coach Lane Kiffin made a jackass of himself by offering a 13-year-old quarterback a scholarship? That kid grew up and turned into one of the best receivers in the country — but not at USC. After Kiffin was fired Sills decommitted from USC and enrolled at WVU in early 2015. A dominant but mechanically unsound passer, Sills fell down the depth chart in his first year, eventually playing as a receiver on the scout team, where he impressed his coaches enough that they decided to make him a full-time wideout for the rest of the season. Although he played in just seven games as a freshman, catching seven passes for 131 yards and two touchdowns, one of his receptions was a game-winning score in the final moments of the team’s bowl game. That he was on the field (much less targeted) in that situation shows how highly the coaching staff thought of him even though he had played receiver for just a few months.
Unable to move up the depth chart as a passer, Sills transferred to El Camino College in Los Angeles County for the 2016 season in the hope of putting enough production on film to garner interest from a major program. That didn’t happen, as he completed just 53.4 percent of his passes for 1,636 yards and 15 touchdowns in 10 games. Accepting his fate as a non-quarterback, Sills transferred back to WVU to play receiver, and in his first full season at the position he has been unbelievable. In 12 games, the 21-year-old junior has 60 receptions for 980 yards and 18 touchdowns receiving — the most in the country, good for an absurd 50 percent market share of WVU’s receiving scores. A Biletnikoff finalist as one of the top wideouts in college football, Sills has expressed his intent to return to WVU for his senior season — which is probably wise given his inexperience — but at some point he will be selected in the NFL draft. If he displays even just average athleticism at the combine, it’s hard to imagine him being drafted lower than the second round. Wide receivers with good size (6’4″ and 203 pounds), elite production, and a quarterback’s brain tend to be highly valued.
Justin Crawford: Running Back, West Virginia
Crawford has chosen not to play in the bowl game so that he may prepare for the draft (read: avoid injury in a meaningless game). A four-year starter, Crawford as a WVU prospect is more comparable to Wendell Smallwood than to Charles Sims in size (6’0″ and 200 pounds) and style — he’s more of a shifty cutback savant than a one-cut straight-ahead runner — but like Sims he transferred to WVU after a productive career elsewhere. A three-star recruit in high school, Crawford went the junior college route and enrolled at Northwest Mississippi Community College, where he amassed 177.5 yards and 1.52 touchdowns from scrimmage per game across two seasons, leading his team to a national championship in his sophomore year as the junior college player of the year.
In his two years of major conference play Crawford has continued to produce, averaging 1,175 yards per season for the Mountaineers. A competent but not prolific pass catcher (58 career receptions), Crawford leaves college with an impressive 6,077 yards and 44 touchdowns on his record. If he’s as athletic as Sims (4.48-second 40) and Smallwood (4.47-second 40) were coming out of WVU, Crawford has a fair chance of being selected on the third day of the draft as a change-of-pace back.
Cactus Bowl: Tuesday, Dec. 26
Another post-Christmas bowl, another showdown between middling Big 12 and Pac-12 teams: Kansas State (7-5) and California-Los Angeles (6-6). On the one side is coaching legend Bill Snyder, who is 2-5 in bowl games since returning to KSU in 2009. On the other side is interim HC and offensive coordinator Jedd Fisch, who has been coaching the Bruins since Jim Mora’s departure following their loss to the in-state rival Trojans. Although Chip Kelly has been hired as Mora’s replacement, he has made clear that Fisch will coach the team through the bowl game. What’s not entirely clear is whether UCLA will have their starting quarterback available. They most likely will not.
Josh Rosen: Quarterback, California-Los Angeles
Apparently desirous not to play for the Browns and fearful that they might select him, Rosen is unsure if he’ll declare for the draft, but most draftniks expect him to leave college given that the 20-year-old junior has been the starter since his freshman year and has little more he can do in school to improve his draft stock. Projected as a first-rounder, Rosen is in the running to be the first quarterback selected and the No. 1 overall pick. One of the top quarterback recruits in high school, Rosen enrolled at UCLA a semester early and opened his first season as the team’s top quarterback, starting all 13 games. For an 18-year-old true freshman in a Power Five conference, Rosen was outstanding, completing 60.0 percent of his passes for 3,669 yards and 23 touchdowns. As a sophomore he suffered a season-ending shoulder injury that limited him to six games, but as a junior he’s had a solid if unspectacular campaign, completing 62.5 percent of his passes for 8.4 adjusted yards per attempt. Pro Football Focus has given Rosen a solid 86.0 grade overall, and he is No. 3 in NFL Media’s college quarterback rankings.
But no prospect is perfect. Although Rosen has long been hyped as a first-round talent, he has some potential issues. First, he doesn’t have great mobility as evidenced by his career mark of -1.4 yards per carry. In college, sacks count as carries, so rushing numbers for quarterbacks are often skewed, but Rosen’s negative yardage indicates that he either takes too many sacks in general or isn’t productive enough as a scrambler to counterbalance the few sacks he takes. Additionally, evaluators might have questions about his health. His season-ending injury last year was to his throwing shoulder, and he just suffered another shoulder (?) injury that forced him to miss the second half of UCLA’s season finale. Additionally, he was forced from this year’s game against Washington and missed the following game against Utah reportedly because of a concussion — and now some reports have stated that he will miss the Cactus Bowl because he suffered another concussion in the finale. Finally, there are reports that some general managers already consider him a player to avoid because of “personality issues” (per Tony Pauline). Rather than change offensive systems and learn Kelly’s scheme as a senior, Rosen will likely enter the draft in 2018 (and hope not to be drafted by Cleveland), which means that one way or another Rosen’s potential issues should be addressed within the next four months.
Photo via Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
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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.
