Know your Chiefs draft crush, part 10: WR speed run
Taking a brief look at Malik Washington, Ricky Pearsall, Roman Wilson, Devontez Walker, Jalen McMillan, Malachi Corley, and Jermaine Burton.
With the draft nearly upon us, let’s streamline this process.
As most of you reading this know, I’ve been looking at wide receivers for this year’s “know your Chiefs draft crush” series. As you can find in yesterday’s article on Javon Baker, I’ve taken a close look at 9 different wide receivers who are considered likely to be drafted in rounds 1-3 (Mitchell, McConkey, Worthy, Coleman, Thomas, Franklin, Legette, Polk, and Baker… you can find the links in the Baker article). It’s been a lot of fun and I’ve found a lot of players I really like in a strong, deep draft class.
However, there are a lot of guys I wanted to review that I didn’t get to (time really is the enemy of production), and that doesn’t sit right with me. Tomorrow, I want to write a finale that ranks the guys I’ve looked at into tiers and discuss what I’d do if I were Brett Veach. And I want to be able to include as many guys as possible in that piece.
So today, I’ll be doing a speed run of WR reviews on some of the guys I missed: Malik Washington, Ricky Pearsall, Roman Wilson, Devontez Walker, Jalen McMillan, Malachi Corley, and Jermaine Burton. The goal is to give you a quick paragraph on what I see on film looking at a couple of games of each. That’ll give you a snapshot and me an opportunity to group them into the tiers I’m creating. If the Chiefs end up drafting any of these guys, I can always circle back and do a more “in depth” review laying out each criteria in detail.
As you can see, that’s a lot of names, so let’s get right to it, starting with Ricky Pearsall.
Ricky Pearsall - Florida - 6’1”, 189 pounds
I’m a late arriver on Pearsall, but liked his film quite a bit. He’s very quick and runs technically precise routes. He also has good athleticism to back it up overall, which isn’t always a combination you see. He’s got deep speed and can explode off the line, though he doesn’t rev up quite as quick as would be ideal. But he’s a tough, tough blocker who was a big part of their run game, and he consistently separated against even a higher-level opponent in Georgia. He also showed a knack for adjusting to the ball down the field and strong hands overall.
