Few draft experts are as clued-in to what evaluators around the league are thinking as NFL.com’s Daniel Jeremiah, so it’s important to pay attention to what he’s saying come draft season. And Jeremiah recently published his second mock draft of the 2023 cycle, this time with a pick for the New Orleans Saints after they received a first rounder from the Denver Broncos in exchange for their old coach Sean Payton.
And Jeremiah has the Saints spending that pick on a wide receiver to pair with Chris Olave, selecting Boston College standout Zay Flowers.
“Flowers is one of the most enjoyable players to study in this year’s class. He’d be a lock for the top 15 if he were two inches taller,” Jeremiah writes of New Orleans’ pick at No. 29 overall.
Jeremiah put Flowers fifth among this year’s crop of wide receivers, clocking in at No. 41 in his top-50 prospect rankings. In this mock draft he has USC wideout Jordan Addison going to the Houston Texans at No. 12, Ohio State’s Jaxon Smith-Njigba to the Seattle Seahawks at No. 20, TCU’s Quentin Johnston to the Los Angeles Chargers at No. 21, and Tennessee prospect Jalin Hyatt to the New York Giants at No. 25. Flowers is the only other receiver going off the board in the first round.
How big of a need will receiver be for the Saints by April? They’re likely to part ways with Michael Thomas, Jarvis Landry, and Deonte Harty this offseason which would leave Olave, Rashid Shaheed, and Tre’Quan Smith on top of the depth chart. Practice squad wideout Keith Kirkwood was recently re-signed for 2023 along with reserves Kirk Merritt and Kawaan Baker. The Saints could look to free agency for help, but the steadily-rising costs of free agent receivers may push them to draft another one early instead.
Which brings us back to Flowers. He’s vaulting up draft boards after impressing at East-West Shrine Bowl practices for a week, but he isn’t a perfect prospect. He had to bulk up to 182 pounds for NFL tryouts and weighed in at just over 5-foot-9 with a 72-inch wingspan. Below-average size isn’t the end of his NFL aspirations — undersized playmakers like Tyreek Hill, Jaylen Waddle, Tyler Lockett, Brandin Cooks, and Diontae Johnson are proof of it.
But there’s a lot of pressure on Flowers’ performance at the upcoming NFL scouting combine to show he can move exceptionally well even for someone of his size to justify a first-round grade. If he can’t push the envelope with a 4.3-second 40-yard dash and impress in other athletic testing drills, he’s likelier to fall to the third round like Lockett and Johnson than be picked in the first frame like Waddle and Cooks were. Someone with 199 receptions (29 of them touchdown catches) in their college career shouldn’t need to prove how quickly they can sprint in a straight line to justify the hype, but that’s what NFL scouts will be looking for in a few weeks.
