985: NFL Draft - A Sneaky Wide Receiver Class

JJ Zachariason (0:02)

This is The Late-Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zachariason.

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode, 985 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. I talked to Jim Sonnis about this quarterback class. I then talked to Jagger May about the running back class. And I'm wrapping things up with this yearly series today with a chat about the wide receiver class. And the guest, it's the same guest that I bring on every year, which is my good friend, Matt Harmon. If you're not familiar with Harmon and his work, he charts wide receiver film with reception perception. And he's done a lot of that charting for this year's class. Matt and I discussed Travis Hunter's skill set, whether Tet Macmillan should be the consensus top wide out, Matthew Golden's analytical concerns, and so much more. It's a really fun conversation for me to have each and every year. Now, I'll get to that discussion in just a second, but as always, I got to remind you to check out the Late-Round Prospect Guide. This is a longer episode. I won't bore you with the details, but check out that Late-Round Prospect Guide. It's over at lateround.com. Now, let's get to this discussion with the one and only, Mr. Matt Harmon. All right, Mr. Harmon, Mr. Reception Perception, Mr. Boy, Youngboy. We meet again for our yearly wide receiver episode, talking about the 2025 class. You know, like I said, we talk every year, but not everyone has heard every episode that we've done. Not everyone has heard about reception perception, even though they should have, but let everyone know about what reception perception is and sort of what your process is for evaluating wide receivers.

Matt Harmon (1:48)

Yeah, I appreciate you having me as always. I always look forward to this conversation with you, even though we talk a lot about prospects on the side as well, but it's good to do it on the air for the people. Yeah, for reception perception, if you're not familiar, what I do is for NFL players, for college prospects, I go in and I chart an eight-game sample on film and basically just try to give you a full picture of who that wide receiver is as a player. Every single snap that they take in that eight-game sample, every route that they run gets logged.

For me, the biggest thing is what type of role does this player play? Where do they line up? Are they outside, in the slot? Even maybe more importantly, are they off or on the line of scrimmage? But the main metrics that everyone loves is the success rate by routes and how often they get open on each route type, how often they get open against man-zone press coverage. Again, really trying to, this is important for prospecting because right now, we don't know where these guys are going to land, but man, destination really can be destiny for these prospects. So, trying to get a full sense of who the player is and then what they might be best at doing, I think is super critical at this point in the calendar, and that's really what Reception Perception is all about.

JJ Zachariason (2:54)

So, you've done a lot of the reception perceptioning of this year's draft class on a scale from to 10, just to kind of high level introduce this class.

How would you rate this class? If last year, maybe give last year's too. Last year's probably like a 9, I would assume, but what would this year be like?

Matt Harmon (3:12)

I love that you've just given it like a to 10 That's instead of rather like, let's compare it to last year, maybe some of these more like kind of holistic sort of thing, like, just give it a next year will be thumbs up, thumbs down for the class.

JJ Zachariason (3:26)

I'm going to do that. I would actually do that.

Matt Harmon (3:28)

Yeah, I like that. Let's do that. But for this class, I'd say it's probably like six and a half, seven, because we certainly don't have the players at the top that we had in last year's class. You know, to me, Harrison, Neighbors, Adunze, I said this all throughout last year, like all those guys were tier one prospects and you could basically put them in any order, and I really wouldn't have fought you on it. Obviously, I think all those guys had success in year one to very varying degrees, obviously. And then Brian Thomas Jr. was a great prospect in his own right. And I think he would be the slam dunk number one in this class if we don't include Travis Hunter. And I know we're going to have the Travis Hunter here, discussion here in just a second. But of all the guys that just played wide receiver, I think I ranked Thomas on the stacked rankings on reception perception ahead of those guys, his prospects. So it was definitely like a better class at the top last year. But the more I dug into this group, JJ, I do think it's a really nice group of day two players. You know, maybe they're not going to be, which is kind of my least favorite term in the dynasty space. Maybe they're not going to be difference makers or whatever for your dynasty team, but good quality NFL players who can be number two's, maybe best as like number three throughout the course of their careers.