5 in 5: My biggest NFL Draft evaluation misses and lessons learned

You can't win 'em all!

It’s okay to talk about our NFL Draft evaluation misses. They happen. They will happen. And they’ll happen a lot.

We’re talking about an industry where NFL teams have a hit rate of below 40 percent. Hitting on NFL Draft evaluations should be treated like a shooting percentage in basketball. The closer to the basket? You'd better make those shots. However, the further you get down the draft board, the harder the shot is to make. We should be looking at Day 2 picks like three-point percentages, and Day 3 picks like contested three-point shots.

However, just because sorting out a big board and hitting on evaluations is a tricky endeavor does not mean there are not lessons to learn from misses. Sure, some are completely out of the player's control, like injuries. In most cases, however, we can pull a lesson learned.

Here, I identify five of my biggest misses over the last five years and the lessons that I have learned from those misses. Enjoy!

Honorable Mention: QB Shedeur Sanders

It’s too early to call this one a miss. Players deserve more than one year to prove they can be a contributor at the NFL level. However, anytime your QB1 goes in the fifth round, then struggles the way that Cleveland Browns quarterback Shedeur Sanders did as a rookie, it’s hard to look past that.

Given the lack of urgency from the Browns to find a quarterback this offseason, it looks like Sanders may get a second season to prove himself. However, the arm talent is middling at the NFL level, the decision-making and ability to take care of the football were well below standard, and the accuracy I saw at the college level was not there in 2025 for the Browns.

Lesson Learned: Working in structure doesn’t make you a good pocket passer

I am an evaluator who tends to lean toward quarterbacks who want to stand in structure and make plays rather than run around along the boundary out of structure before a receiver pops open. However, what I neglected or failed to weigh heavily enough with Sanders was the pocket drifting, unwillingness to step up into pressure, or really feel out and anticipate where his hot is.

Just because a quarterback comes from a system with more pure dropbacks in structure does not make them a confident pocket passer. Sanders’ time as a starter may not be dead yet, but he’s got a lot of work to do.

WR Tyler Scott, Cincinnati (2023)

I loved Tyler Scott coming out of Cincinnati in the 2023 NFL Draft. I had him ranked 33rd on my big board. Fast forward just three league years later, and Scott was cut from the Chicago Bears, who drafted him in the fourth round. Now, Scott has been bouncing around practice squads with the Indianapolis Colts, Seattle Seahawks, and the Los Angeles Rams.

Lesson Learned: The ability to play through contact is a non-negotiable

Scott was the final straw for me in a long list of wide receivers that I loved because of their quick-twitch, route-running ability, and instant acceleration to top speed, but cannot play through contact and still win. Other receivers on this list that I loved as prospects who have gone on to underwhelm at the NFL level include Jerry Jeudy and Elijah Moore.

Football is a contact sport. First and foremost, a player has to be able to hit and be hit. Now, the ability to seperate is still non-negotiable. However, the thought that players who are soft through contact can still win because defenders have a hard time getting hands on them anyway is one of the past for me as an evaluator.

OT Evan Neal (2022)

Coming out of Alabama in the 2022 NFL Draft, Evan Neal was the No. 2 player on my board. I did not think there was any way a player of his size and freakish athletic ability could fail at the NFL level. I ignored how much time he spent on the ground at the NFL level and instead marveled at the foot speed, explosiveness, and sheer power in his massive frame.

Despite being drafted fifth overall in that year’s draft class, Neal has yet to find his footing. The New York Giants have not given up on him yet, re-signing him to a small one-year deal, but Neal is far from a penned-in starter despite his draft slot.

Lesson Learned: Balance issues and how a player’s weight sits on their base are hard to fix

Balance issues are hard for me to look past now. There are some things that individuals may seem to think I may let the pendulum swing too far on as an overcorrection. However, even since Neal, I have yet to really find a player who has balance at the college level and find a way to fix it in the NFL.

Another example of this would be JC Latham, selected top-10 by the Tennessee Titans. Even under the guidance of one of the more accomplished offensive line coaches, Bill Callahan, Latham has struggled to find his footing (literally) through two seasons with the Titans.

How a player’s weight sits from their shoulders down to their feet is a tough thing to rep out of a player or correct.

CB Andrew Booth (2022)

Coming out of Clemson in the 2022 NFL Draft, I was a massive believer in the raw tools of Andrew Booth. It was not even just raw tools either! Booth was light-footed, refined in press man coverage, and possessed other-worldly ball skills.

To this day, I am still shocked that Booth did not work out at the NFL level. But he is an example of knowing only what we have access to at the time. And for the majority of draftniks and analysts, that is the film only.

Lesson Learned: We do not get access to the full scope of a player profile

It later came out that Booth was not the most dialed in to the game of football. Work ethic concerns and a desire to be great were questioned by scouts pre-draft. Booth was working through an injury at the time and did not test at the combine or his pro day. Perhaps there was more to that story, too.

This is a sticky part about NFL scouting. Now, I do have more access to information from scouts around the league than I did four years ago. And now, teams have a better understanding of how players respond to getting a large sum of money all at once, with NIL now in effect, the way it wasn’t back then.

However, there is a large number of player profiles that are happening behind the scenes that analysts and reporters are not always privy to.

WR Skyy Moore (2022)

I loved Skyy Moore coming out of Western Michigan. LOVED him. He sat 38th on my big board that year, landing with the Kansas City Chiefs in the second round of the 2022 NFL Draft. Moore has found a way to stick around at the NFL level, but only as a return specialist and signing with the Green Bay Packers in free agency.

His days as a wide receiver threat are over after amassing less than 500 total receiving yards during his tenure with the Chiefs. So, what went wrong with this evaluation?

Lesson Learned: Level of Competition matters

You really have to look at the level of competition that some of these wide receivers are playing at, and try to hunt out the NFL talent they were going against.

For Moore at Western Michigan, he had two Power Five games in his final season of eligibility. Against Michigan, he had just two catches for 22 yards. He did, however, cook Pitt for 10 catches, 123 yards, and a touchdown in an upset win. However, the only NFL player in that Pitt secondary is M.J. Devonshire, who is a practice squad player for the Buffalo Bills.

Moore did what you want a MAC player to do: Dominate the MAC. He had five conference games of over 100 yards, and even dropped 200 on Northern Illinois. However, I should have been more keen to the level of talent Moore was cooking up.

QBs Justin Fields and Trey Lance

Looking back at the 2021 quarterback class, which saw five quarterbacks go in the first round, it has turned out to be a disappointing crop. I was low on Zach Wilson in that class, but I had top-five grades on both Justin Fields and Trey Lance at the same time.

It was early in my evaluation career, just my second year scouting prospects, but those are definite misses. I saw two big quarterbacks with high-end athleticism and thought this was the new wave.

This was at the rise of the Shanahan system, wide-zone offenses were at an all-time high, and quarterbacks were playing in friendly systems. So, I thought the ability to ease them on the field and develop them to provide a clean transition to the NFL level as well.

Oops.

Lesson Learned: There is more to QB play than freak athleticism and lethal accuracy

Despite being an incredibly accurate thrower at Ohio State and despite being a rare athlete, Fields clearly is not a starting-caliber quarterback at the NFL level. He has now had his shot with three different franchises, as he now backs up Patrick Mahomes with the Kansas City Chiefs.

The eyes from Fields are just too slow. He does not understand what he is seeing pre-snap, and he does not adjust fast enough on the fly to pick up what NFL defensive coordinators have thrown at him through five seasons.

Lance was the same kind of athlete and thrower coming out of North Dakota State, and even a clean pocket thrower with crisp, hammered-out throwing mechanics. While health played into Lance’s development, he has had some of the same issues as Fields, too.

I’ll definitely miss again, but this aspect of knowing where a quarterback is hot pre-snap, seeing information well, and confirming the information quickly is why I was so high on the now runaway first overall pick, Fernando Mendoza, this past Spring.