Late-round draft picks that have turned into OSM darlings

Draft stocks rise and fall throughout a college athlete’s journey to the NFL Draft stage. From sure-thing first-rounders falling due to a bad season or a player from a smaller school blowing people away at the combine, there are so many different scenarios when it comes to a reason a player rises or falls. However, just because a player is drafted later on does not mean they will not have an immediate impact. Four mid to late-round picks put on quite the OSM performance in their rookie years.

Pro Football Network’s Offensive Share Metric goes back to 2016, which marks the start of the NFL’s Next Gen Stats. So, starting with the 2016 NFL Draft, four players have been identified who were selected in the third round or later and went on to be in the upper tier of OSM scores at their position.

The 2016 selection was Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill, the Los Angeles Rams WR Cooper Kupp in 2017, 2018 featured Chris Herndon from the New York Jets, and finally in 2019, the Oakland Raiders WR Hunter Renfrow.

Using both OSM and the Next Gen Stats, let’s take a look at how these players went from late-round grabs to league leaders in an instant.

2016 NFL Draft late-round pick Tyreek Hill

Back in 2016, the Kansas City Chiefs drafted Hill from West Alabama in the fifth round with the 165th overall draft pick. Expected to be an undrafted free agent due to some serious off the field issues, Hill was actually “over-drafted” in a sense. However, his talent was never in question; he garnered a lot of attention at his West Alabama Pro Day and had many NFL teams interested in his potential.

During his rookie campaign, Hill caught 61 receptions for 593 yards and six touchdowns. According to Next Gen Stats, Hill has the highest average cushion at eight yards while backing it up with the third-highest average separation in the league at 3.5 yards. He also had a catch percentage of 73.49% and had a modest yards after the catch per reception mark of 4.7 yards, putting him on the high end of the middle pack of receivers.

Hill earned an OSM score of 38.62 during his rookie season in 2016, ranking him as the fourth overall receiver that season. Hill has now gone from a fifth-round pick to one of the most lethal deep threats in the league while also tacking on a Super Bowl in the process.

2017 Rams find Cooper Kupp in third-round

2017 provided a very different story. The Los Angeles Rams selected Kupp from Eastern Washington in the third round with the 69th pick overall. This is the absolute top end of the mid-round scale, but the find comes in players selected before him.

Before the Rams took Kupp in the third round, six other wide receivers were selected before him: Corey Davis, Mike Williams, John Ross, Zay Jones, Curtis Samuel, and Juju Smith-Schuster.

Of those six, only Smith-Schuster finished higher than Kupp in OSM. Kupp finished the 2017 season with an OSM grade of 35.61, ranking him as the 11th overall wide receiver. He had the highest average cushion according to Next Gen Stats at 7.4 yards and found 3.1 yards of average separation, which came in at sixth overall.

Kupp caught 65.96% of his targets and averaged 6 yards of YAC per reception, which placed him among the top receivers in this category as well. Overall, Kupp has been a substantial addition to the Rams offense and has helped contribute to the success of the passing game.

2018 Mid-round find Chris Herndon

The New York Jets selected Herndon from the University of Miami in the fourth round with the 107th overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft. He was the seventh tight end selected behind names such as Hayden Hurst, Mike Gesicki, Dallas Goedert, and Mark Andrews.

Herndon caught 39 passes, 25 of which went for first downs, for 502 yards and four touchdowns. He earned an OSM score of 36.59 during the 2018 season and was ranked as TE 12 and the second-best rookie tight end behind Goedert and was a reliable target for fellow rookie QB Sam Darnold at the time and was dropping jaws along the way.

#Jets rookie TE Chris Herndon makes an impressive one-handed grab pic.twitter.com/DaExly0Btd

— NFL Update (@MySportsUpdate) December 23, 2018

Herndon found 5.7 average yards of cushion and 3.1 yards of separation while catching 69.64% of the targets that were sent his way. He also found 5.2 yards after the catch per reception, which was 0.3 yards than expected per Next Gen Stats.

While Herndon had a productive rookie season, he was suspended the first four games of the 2019 season due to violating the NFL’s policy and program on substance abuse. He was activated before Week 7 but was placed on the injured reserve in Week 11.

 2019 Late-round pick Hunter Renfrow leads the league

The final spotlight belongs to Renfrow. The Las Vegas Raiders drafted the Clemson product with the 149th overall pick in the 2019 NFL Draft. Renfrow won the national championship two times, playing a significant role in both victories.

Coming into the draft, everyone knew Renfrow had that clutch factor and hands that catch anything that comes their way. However, his 5’10” 180-pound stature did not do him many favors, and he fell to the Raiders who took him with a late-round pick.

Renfrow caught 49 passes for 605 yards and four touchdowns. 31 of his 49 receptions went for first downs. He earned an overall OSM grade of 39 during his 2019 rookie campaign and was ranked WR1 and eighth overall in the league.

Renfrow found 6.7 average yards of cushion, the sixth highest in the league, and also found 3.5 average yards of separation in 2019, the second-highest among wide receivers. He also turned receptions into yardage finding 6.8 yards after the catch per reception and shattered his expected rate with a 1.9-yard differential, the seventh-highest in the league.

Impact players can be found all over the draft, not just the first two rounds. With the 2020 Draft already started, it will be intriguing to see who we are looking back on as the surprise selections from this season.