A year after 6 wide receivers were picked in the first round of the NFL draft, and nine were chosen within the first 41 picks, the 2016 draft class at the position looks bereft by comparison.
At least that's the way an NFC personnel director sees the 2016 sequel to the receiving talent in last year's draft.
"It's just a bad group," the director said, per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "There's not one sure thing."
The closest thing to a sure thing, according to a polling of 19 NFL scouts by the Journal Sentinel, is Ole Miss' Laquon Treadwell. The scouts were asked to rank their top five receivers for next week's draft, with first-place votes being worth five points, a second-place vote worth four, and so on. The former Rebels star (70 points) topped TCU's Josh Doctson (64), Baylor's Corey Coleman (60) and Notre Dame's Will Fuller (43) as the top receiver in the draft.
Although Treadwell's speed (4.63-second 40-yard dash at Ole Miss' pro day) is the reason scouts question his potential, he's been plenty busy with interested teams of late with pre-draft visits to the Bears, Jets and Giants. Coleman is faster, but lacks Treadwell's size. Yet both Treadwell and Coleman could be first-round choices regardless of how they compare with the best receivers from previous drafts. Three NFL Media mock drafts currently project Treadwell to the Minnesota Vikingsat No. 23 overall.
The complete package at the position doesn't exist in the draft the way it did, for instance, with Alabama's Amari Cooper a year ago or with West Virginia's Kevin White. Both were top-10 picks, though White has yet to prove himself at the next level after sitting out his rookie season following surgery to repair a stress fracture.
Arkansas' Hunter Henry took the scouts' voting as the draft's top tight end, which is yet another position considered one of the draft's thinnest.
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