This guy at rotoviz thinks that this years #1 most freakish athlete in college football compares to Santonia Holmes, Kendell Wright, or Golden Taint more than the two you name. A couple of the NFL guys like Jeremiah say Coleman is there number 1 WR in this draft. Fisher and Snead love the super athletic types, so maybe Coleman is one of the receivers that supposedly peaked their interest this year.
http://rotoviz.com/2015/10/corey-coleman-system-wr-elite-prospect/
Baylor’s Corey Coleman: System WR or Elite Prospect?
Jon Moore 2015-10-08
October 8, 2015 | By
Jon Moore
Through four games this year,
Corey Coleman has 11 touchdown receptions.
During the
entire 2014 college football season only 19 players matched that feat.
There’s no question that Corey Coleman is an outstanding college receiver. The question has become “what caliber of pro prospect is Coleman?”
Continuing my series of
college prospect profiles, let’s put Corey Coleman under the microscope to see how his college career compares to other similar prospects, and to some of the most dominant undersized touchdown scorers in recent memory.
Little Men with Big Touchdown Numbers
To date, Corey Coleman has played in 26 career games and scored 24 total touchdowns, giving him a career touchdowns-per-game rate of 0.92.
Of BCS/Power-5 conference receivers since 2004, only two in the sub-6-foot-200 pound club have surpassed that figure:
Stedman Bailey (1.05) and
Ryan Broyles (0.94).
Maybe those guys aren’t exactly inspiring comparisons, but I think invoking their names is helpful for two reasons; first, because they were both top 100 draftees and, second, because Corey Coleman’s career has been more impressive than theirs. Here is how their careers compare in terms of age and market share of receiving yards.
To summarize, Corey Coleman got on the field sooner than Bailey or Broyles, was signficiantly better in his age 20 season, and is on pace to be much better in his age 21 season.
Athletically, it is believed that Coleman will be far superior to both of these players, as he was recently named
NFL.com’s #1 most freakish athlete in college football. Compare this to Ryan Broyles, who tore his left ACL during his senior season and his right ACL during his rookie season, and to Stedman Bailey who ran a 4.52 forty with just a 34.5 inch vertical and 117 inch broad jump, and it’s easy to see that the main commonalities between Coleman, Broyles and Bailey is their touchdown dominance, size, and conference; everywhere else Coleman is superior. At the very least, if Bailey and Broyles did enough in their college career to be top 100 picks, so has Corey Coleman.
Coleman’s NFL comparables
Three guys who I think are pretty similar prospects to Coleman are
Santonio Holmes,
Kendall Wright, and
Golden Taint. These comparables were found by looking for players from major programs with at least 24 career touchdowns
1 and similar body types.
Both Holmes and Taint have posted 150+ point fantasy seasons, and Wright is trending in that direction so far in 2015. Here is how their college careers compare:
You can see that Wright and Holmes started their careers better than Coleman, but as we move toward the final data points for each player, the foursome is pretty tightly bunched, with Coleman, Holmes and Taint being nearly identical while Wright is a fraction beneath them.
Unsurprisingly, their draft selections were all in a pretty similar range as well. Kendall Wright went 20th overall, Santonio Holmes 25th overall, and Golden Taint 60th overall. I’m not sure why Taint wasn’t selected higher; maybe due to his marginally worse athleticism? But if it cuts that way for Taint, I’d think it would only help Coleman’s stock, who is supposed to be an athletic marvel. Here’s a quick look.
2
WR Ht Wt 40 Vert 3cone
Kendall Wright 5'10 196 4.49 38.5 6.93
Santonio Holmes 5'10 188 4.35 38 6.82
Golden Taint 5'10 199 4.42 35 7.12
Corey Coleman (reported) 5'11 190 4.38 45 6.62
In summary, Corey Coleman looks like an elite small-receiver prospect who is worthy of being drafted in the bottom half of the first round. His age 20 breakthrough is perhaps a little later than what we would ideallys like, but the athleticism, draft comparables and dominant production all seem to foreshadow a strong WR2-type fantasy asset.
Have a look at him in this DraftBreakdown video against Oklahoma in 2014 and let me know what you think.
