Top 25 NFL breakout prospects (including 2 Rams)

Top 25 NFL breakout prospects

Andre Ellington leads list of young players ready to make an impact

By Aaron Schatz | Football Outsiders

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he best NFL organizations don’t just find talent in the first and second rounds of the draft. They find talent with their later picks and with their unsigned free agents. For the best example, look no further than the reigning Super Bowl champions. Quarterback Russell Wilson, of course, was a third-round selection. So was defensive tackle Brandon Mebane. The Seahawks got half of the Legion of Boom in the fifth round: Kam Chancellor in 2010, and then Richard Sherman in 2011. Malcolm Smith, the Super Bowl MVP, was added in the seventh round. And receivers Doug Baldwin and Jermaine Kearse were both undrafted free agents.

Every year since 2007, Football Outsiders has put together a preseason prospect list to highlight the lower-drafted players who are set to make a much larger impact in the seasons ahead. For the uninitiated, our “top prospects” list is not like the prospect lists you read about in the world of baseball. Since the top prospects in college football are stars on national television before they get taken in the first round of the NFL draft, there’s not much utility in listing them here. Everyone knows who Sammy Watkins and Johnny Manziel are by this point. Instead, we use a combination of statistics, scouting, measurables, context, and expected role to compile a list of under-the-radar players we expect to make an impact in the NFL, both in 2014 and beyond.

We limit the pool to players who fit the following criteria:

• Drafted in the third round or later, or signed as an undrafted free agent
• Entered the NFL between 2011 and 2013
• Started fewer than five career games
• Still on their initial contract with their current team (players who were cut and picked up elsewhere still qualify)
• Age 26 or younger in 2014

Our No. 1 prospects have included Miles Austin (2009) and Mike Wallace (2010). Last summer’s edition included T.Y. Hilton at No. 3. However, this isn’t strictly a fantasy football list; defensive players who have been featured on our list before they became regular starters include Geno Atkins, Morgan Burnett, Elvis Dumervil and Cortland Finnegan.

You’ll see a number of references to Football Outsiders stats on our list, in particular DVOA (defense-adjusted value over average), which takes every play and compares its success to the NFL average based on situation and opponent. You can read more about that and other FO stats on this page. You’ll also see a few references to Football Outsiders’ systems for projecting college talent to the pros. To learn about those systems, click these links for playmaker score, SackSEER and speed score.

1. Andre Ellington, RB, Arizona Cardinals

The Cardinals primarily used two running backs last season. One of them, veteran Rashard Mendenhall, averaged a dismal 3.2 yards per carry with a minus-10.2 percent DVOA. But running behind the same line, seventh-round rookie Ellington averaged 5.5 yards per carry with 17.5 percent DVOA. Now Mendenhall is gone, and Ellington is the starter and a clear workhorse for the Cardinals. We were worried about Ellington coming into the NFL, since he ran the 40-yard dash in 4.61 seconds at 199 pounds, leading to a speed score of just 88.1. However, he may have just been having a bad day; that time improved to 4.51 at his pro day, for a better speed score of 96.1. And he’s certainly shown great speed getting to the edge so far in his NFL career; perhaps his speed just shows better running laterally instead of running straight ahead on a track with no blockers or defenders. Much like the similarly sized Jamaal Charles, Ellington is a great receiver as well as runner. He can catch passes out of the backfield, but can also be split out wide or used on bubble screens. Last season, he caught 39 passes for 371 yards, nearly 10 yards per catch with 22.3 percent DVOA. Ellington’s not going to average 5.5 yards per carry every season, but he’s definitely a potential star in the making.

2. Travis Kelce, TE, Kansas City Chiefs

Kelce, a third-round pick out of Cincinnati, lost pretty much his entire rookie season to a knee injury, but he should be back on the field in time for this year’s training camp. The Chiefs will start two tight ends, with Anthony Fasano as the more standard in-line tight end and Kelce moving all over the formation. Last year, Football Outsiders’ Matt Waldman actually ranked Kelce above Tyler Eifert and Jordan Reed as the No. 1 tight end in his Rookie Scouting Portfolio. Make no mistake, Eifert and Reed are better receivers, but Kelce may be the superior all-around talent. He’s a fantastic blocker who also shows great range of motion to block on the move as a fullback or H-back. That same fluid motion shows up as a receiver, along with great hands and the ability to get open in tight coverage and make hard breaks on routes.

3. Damontre Moore, DE, New York Giants

Moore had 12.5 sacks for Texas A&M in 2012, but he was very slow adapting to his first year in the NFL. However, the Giants got him on the field a lot more at the end of the season: Moore had just 34 total defensive snaps in the first 11 games, but then averaged 20 per game for the final five. Moore is quick off the edge and has long arms to ward off blocks, but he ended up dropping to the third round because of a mediocre combine performance. Yet despite the mediocre workouts, our SackSEER projection system (which does incorporate some combine drills) still thought he was an excellent prospect. He had the fourth-highest SackSEER projection in the Class of 2013; we have him projected for 28 sacks through five seasons. Since he had zero as a rookie, he’ll need to hit that in four seasons, but it really wouldn’t be a surprise to see him do it. There’s a real need for a good young pass rusher in New York; in fact, if Jason Pierre-Paul can’t somehow find his lost 2011 form, there might be a real need for two of them.

4. Jordan Reed, TE, Washington Redskins

There aren’t many players with the skill set that Reed possesses. He’s physical enough to bully smaller corners in the slot, and he’s fast enough to run past linebackers. And while he didn’t run a lot of deep routes as a rookie — just 7 percent of intended passes went over 15 yards through the air — he has the speed to do so if Jay Gruden asks him to. Reed was fantastic as a rookie, and he ended up 10th in our tight end DYAR numbers despite a concussion that ended his season after just 10 games. But, he’s healthy again, and his quarterback should be healthier, too, which can only help things. Kelce may be a slightly better overall prospect, but Reed is the more important name to know for fantasy leagues, especially this season.

5. Terron Armstead, OT, New Orleans Saints

Armstead didn’t get a lot of attention playing at Arkansas-Pine Bluff (go, Golden Lions!), but he made a name for himself at the 2013 combine, leading all offensive line participants in the vertical leap and broad jump, while running a 4.71-second 40-yard dash that was the best for an O-line prospect in combine history. It’s hard to judge linemen who play against competition such as Langston and Tennessee State, so nobody drafted Armstead until the Saints grabbed him 75th overall. The plan was to sit Armstead for a year, but he developed quickly enough that New Orleans promoted him into the starting lineup at left tackle in Week 16. The timing of the move speaks volumes: the Saints were 10-4, tied with Carolina for first place in the division, and Charles Brown, though not playing particularly well, was still healthy. Unfortunately, Armstead got his clock cleaned by Greg Hardy in that game, but he redeemed himself with strong play in Week 17 and in two postseason games. With a full offseason of first-string work under his belt, and a quarterback in Drew Brees who makes good linemen look great, Armstead figures to shine.

6. Marquess Wilson, WR, Chicago Bears

Look, kids, it’s a tall (6-foot-3) receiver who excels at using his big body to win in tight coverage! The Bears don’t have any guys like that, right? Actually, they have two guys like that currently starting, but Wilson will give them a third. Wilson’s playmaker rating of 79.5 percent would rank him behind many of the receivers in this year’s phenomenal rookie class, but it’s still outstanding for a seventh-round pick, and it ranked Wilson in the top 10 for the Class of 2013. Plus, to make sure he was as strong as Brandon Marshall and Alshon Jeffery, Wilson spent the offseason adding nearly 20 pounds in the weight room. We know that the Bears don’t throw very much to their third receiver, but if either Marshall or Jeffery suffers a major injury, it’s fantasy stampede time.

7. Micah Hyde, DB, Green Bay Packers

“Ready for anything at any position,” is how an article at Packers.com described Hyde, and frankly, that’s exactly what makes Hyde a great fit for Dom Capers’ defense. Hyde played both cornerback and safety at Iowa. He’s smart, instinctual and has a strong burst, but he fell to the fifth round because he lacks top speed. Well, that lack of top speed didn’t stop him from taking over both Green Bay return jobs by the end of the season. It didn’t stop him from scoring a 93-yard punt return touchdown. And it doesn’t tend to stop him from tracking down ball carriers, as long as you aren’t asking him to do something like cover Brandon Marshall on the outside. Hyde was primarily a nickel and dime cornerback as a rookie, but he has spent the offseason learning what Capers wants from his safeties as well. When Capers goes 2-4-5, that fifth defensive back can be doing all kinds of things: Sometimes he’s a nickelback covering a slot receiver, sometimes he’s a strong safety in to stop the run, and sometimes he’s a blitzer coming after the quarterback. This season, a lot of the time, that guy’s going to be Hyde.

8. William Gholston, DE, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

The biggest knock on Gholston coming out of college was that the motor just wasn’t always on. He’s incredibly impressive physically — 6-6, 34-inch arms, excellent lateral movement — but only had 9.5 sacks in two years as a starter at Michigan State. However, it looks like things are going to be different in the NFL. Gholston flashed as a rookie, particularly near the end of season. In a Week 15 game against San Francisco, Gholston knocked down two passes and helped nail Frank Gore in the backfield on third-and-1. Now he gets to play for Lovie Smith, a well-regarded players’ coach who is good at inspiring occasionally sluggish performers. Ex-Bears scout Greg Gabriel, writing for National Football Post, has gone on record predicting seven sacks and 50 tackles for Gholston in Smith’s defense this season, though he’s unlikely to put up numbers quite like that unless he can unexpectedly beat out Adrian Clayborn for a starting spot.

9. Markus Wheaton, WR, Pittsburgh Steelers

It looked like this Oregon State product would slide right into Pittsburgh’s No. 3 receiver spot after the Steelers took him in the third round last year. After all, with Emmanuel Sanders moving into the starting lineup, all Wheaton had to do was beat out veteran Jerricho Cotchery, who had only caught 33 passes in his first two seasons in Pittsburgh. Historically, the Steelers like to work rookies in slowly, so it wasn’t a surprise when Cotchery still started the season ahead of Wheaton on the depth chart. But Wheaton never got that gradual increase in snap counts because of two broken fingers suffered in Week 4, and he ended up with a lost rookie year while Cotchery somehow had 10 touchdowns. Even when Wheaton did play, Ben Roethlisberger overthrew him five times on just 13 targets. Hopefully things are better with another training camp worth of practices to work out their timing, because Wheaton may have been the most promising vertical receiver in the 2013 draft thanks to a combination of speed and ability to beat press coverage. With Sanders and Cotchery both elsewhere, the starting spot opposite Antonio Brown is Wheaton’s to lose.

10. Knile Davis, RB, Kansas City Chiefs

Our speed score metric looks at running back prospects based not only on speed but on weight, because a bigger back who is fast is generally better than a smaller back who is only slightly faster. Well, Knile Davis is the bigger back and the faster back. He weighed in at 227 pounds and ran the 40 in 4.37 seconds at the 2013 combine, giving him a speed score of 124.5 — the second highest of the past decade (Mario Fannin’s 125.5 is the record). Davis struggled a bit as a rookie, with just 3.5 yards per carry on 70 regular-season carries, but that’s no reason to write him off. He’ll get more of a chance to prove himself, as the Chiefs want to give Jamaal Charles a little more rest this season. But as a power back with 30 more pounds on him, Davis is more of a complement to Charles than a backup. The negatives on Davis? He’s been injury-prone, from the ankle injury that cost him his entire junior season at Arkansas to the leg fracture that knocked him out of last season’s wild-card game after he scored two touchdowns in relief of Charles. He also has trouble hanging onto the football, with two fumbles last season on just 81 touches.

11. John Hughes, DE, Cleveland Browns

Hughes is a sturdy run-stopping five-technique end on a team that certainly needs one. Ahtyba Rubin seems to be well-regarded around the league, but he’s always come out poorly in our advanced run stats. Last season, Rubin made his average tackle on a running play after a gain of 3.1 yards, with a 63 percent stop rate. Hughes made his average tackle after a gain of 2.1 yards, with an 84 percent stop rate. As a bonus, he had six pass hurries, more than either Rubin or fellow backup Billy Winn. Hughes also enjoys meeting with his breakfast club before games, as well as road trips aboard planes, trains and automobiles.

12. Ray-Ray Armstrong, OLB, St. Louis Rams

Armstrong came to the NFL after a very confusing college career, but now he’s certainly a player to watch. He played two seasons with the Miami Hurricanes as a safety, then was dismissed from the team, apparently for lying to officials during the Nevin Shapiro investigation. Armstrong transferred to NAIA Faulkner University in Alabama, but when the NAIA declared him ineligible, he ended up spending the 2012 season as an assistant coach. He’s a hard hitter who was never strong in pass coverage, so a position switch upon entering the NFL made a lot of sense. In the meantime, he led the Rams in special-teams tackles last season while learning the linebacker position. Gregg Williams likes to use safety/linebacker hybrids: That’s how he planned to use Adam Archuleta in Washington, it’s how he used Roman Harper in New Orleans, and it would be an interesting way to use Armstrong in St. Louis. However, Armstrong might just straight-out take over the strong-side linebacker position, especially after veteran Jo-Lonn Dunbar was arrested in July. Let’s be honest: The NFL would be a more fun place if at least one team had a starting linebacker named Ray-Ray.

13. Ryan Mallett, QB, New England Patriots

We put Mallett on this list in 2012 and 2013, and gosh darn it, we’re putting him here in 2014 as well, because we’re stubborn. And because, let’s all be honest, there’s a reason we were hearing lots of Ryan Mallett trade rumors in April, but no Ryan Nassib trade rumors or Landry Jones trade rumors. Plenty of coaches still love his elite arm strength and his touch on the deep ball. The drafting of Jimmy Garoppolo means there’s no way Mallett will be back with the Patriots in 2015, and some team somewhere is going to give him a shot at a starting job. Hopefully it will be a team with a good offensive line, because Mallett’s biggest weakness is that he takes a lot of sacks.

14. Darrin Walls, CB, New York Jets

Walls, a third-year UDFA out of Notre Dame, is the man who replaced Dee Milliner last season when Rex Ryan benched the struggling rookie. He didn’t play much in the second half of the year, but that’s because the Jets finally just left Milliner in the lineup, not because Walls played poorly when he was on the field. Thirty targets aren’t enough to make the rankings of our cornerback charting stats, but Walls would have ranked in the top half of the league with a 58 percent adjusted success rate and in the top dozen with just 5.0 adjusted yards per pass allowed. The Jets seem to view Walls as a special-teams player and backup, but there’s a decent shot he ends up starting opposite Milliner. After all, the player the Jets brought in to replace Antonio Cromartie is Dimitri Patterson, who is 31, on his seventh team and only played six games for the Dolphins last season.

15. Allen Bailey, DE, Kansas City Chiefs

We’ll fully admit that Bailey is just skirting the limits of being eligible for our list. He’s a third-round pick going into his fourth season, and he has four career games started, which is our maximum. But as long as we’re keeping to the rules, we definitely want to bring him to your attention, because he’s likely to replace Tyson Jackson as Kansas City’s starting left defensive end. He’s gained 15-20 pounds this offseason to get over 300, which puts him in the same weight class as the players he is competing with for playing time (Mike DeVito, Vance Walker). It should also help him avoid getting pushed back on running plays; he made his average run tackle last year 3.3 yards downfield, one of the worst figures in the league for a defensive lineman.

16. Stedman Bailey, WR, St. Louis Rams

Since 2004, only 13 wide receivers have registered a playmaker score above 95 percent, making them the best of the best prospects. There are a couple of exceptions, but for the most part, those players have become studs in the NFL: Larry Fitzgerald, Chris Henry, Santonio Holmes, Calvin Johnson, Percy Harvin, Hakeem Nicks, Demaryius Thomas, Golden Tate, Dez Bryant, Stephen Hill … and Stedman Bailey. (Note that Saints rookie Brandin Cooks eclipsed that threshold out of this year’s WR crop.) Bailey had 1,622 receiving yards and 25 touchdowns in his final year at West Virginia. He had all those yards and touchdowns even though he had to share the offense with Tavon Austin. Then again, that’s also a sign that these two guys should work well together, which is good now that they’re both on the Rams. It looked like Bailey was going to carry the late-season improvement of his rookie year into 2014 until he got handed a four-game suspension for violating the performance-enhancing substance policy. Still, the biggest worry for Bailey isn’t the suspension. It’s the possibility that poor quarterback play and constant confusion over what the Jets wanted to do on offense are the reasons Stephen Hill never blossomed. The Rams have the same problems right now, and when you look at that list of 10 other receivers, Hill is clearly the worst-case scenario.

17. Robert Lester, SS, Carolina Panthers

Lester started 40 games at Alabama, winning three national titles and earning second-team honors on the 2012 All-SEC team. The NFL’s own draft site tabbed Lester as a midround pick, but he surprisingly slipped out of the draft entirely. He signed with the Panthers, then made the jump from practice squad to NFL starter in one week when Carolina’s secondary was ravaged with early-season injuries. He responded with interceptions in each of his first two games, and though he didn’t stick in the starting lineup, he was a regular contributor the rest of the season. He has limited athleticism and speed, but he’s a 225-pound thumper with good instincts and playmaking capacity; defensive coordinator Sean McDermott praised his ability to find the ball and make plays on it in the air.

18. Travaris Cadet, RB, New Orleans Saints

Cadet is now in his third year as an undrafted free agent out of Appalachian State, primarily well-regarded for his abilities as a receiver. Do you know any head coaches down South who have a good track record with undrafted free-agent running backs? How about head coaches who like to use their running backs in the receiving game? Do you think Sean Payton might be the perfect head coach for a guy with Cadet’s skill set? Now consider the fact that Darren Sproles has moved on to Philadelphia. Mark Ingram and Khiry Robinson certainly aren’t going to be running Sproles’ routes in the offense, and Payton likes to rotate backs and won’t make Pierre Thomas any kind of workhorse. That leaves a big opening for Cadet. He has weaknesses as a runner, as he tends to run straight-up and lacks breakaway speed. But Payton didn’t become famous as an offensive innovator because he puts players in roles that emphasize their weaknesses.

19. Emmanuel Lamur, OLB, Cincinnati Bengals

Lamur was on our list last year after his strong rookie season in 2012. We praised him for his steady performance on special teams, his tackling in the open field, and his excellent pass coverage skills (he was a safety at Kansas State). Then he went and separated his shoulder in the fourth preseason game, ending his 2013 season. One year later, there’s been even more excitement about Lamur coming out of Bengals OTAs, as he’s put on extra muscle to improve his run-stopping abilities at linebacker. He’s going to be the starting strong-side linebacker and should play all three downs alongside Vontaze Burfict, who was also an undrafted free agent.

20. Nickell Robey, CB, Buffalo Bills

Robey, of course, has the perfect first name for a nickelback, and his stats come with nickelback sample-size caveats. But he was outstanding last season as an undrafted rookie out of USC, finishing second among qualifying cornerbacks in our charting stats, with a 68 percent adjusted success rate, and 24th in allowing 6.9 adjusted yards per pass. The negatives on Robey’s scouting report were much less about coverage and much more about trouble tackling or taking on blocks. When you combine those weaknesses with Robey’s size (just 5-7, 165 pounds), it means you have to use him in very specific ways. But as a rookie, he was put in a position that emphasized his strengths, and he delivered.

21. Ricky Wagner, OT, Baltimore Ravens

After last year’s debacle, the Ravens could really use some offensive linemen who excel at run blocking. Guess what? They have at least one. Wagner was a fifth-round pick last year out of Wisconsin, where the offensive linemen practically have “road-grader” tattooed on their foreheads. He played a couple snaps in each game last season in six-lineman packages, but now he will take over for Michael Oher at right tackle.

22. Chris Owusu, WR, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Owusu’s 4.36-second 40-yard dash tied him with Stephen Hill and Travis Benjamin as the fastest wideouts at the 2012 combine. He hasn’t done much in two years with the Bucs, who haven’t even tried using his speed as a decoy; only one of his 20 targets last season was a “bomb” more than 25 yards downfield. (In other news, Greg Schiano wasn’t very good at getting the most out of his players.) Tampa Bay is woefully thin at receiver behind Vincent Jackson and first-round pick Mike Evans, and Owusu seems the favorite to win the third receiver job. Lovie Smith knows how to use guys with this kind of speed. Johnny Knox, who once ran the 40 in 4.34 seconds, twice went over 700 yards and 18 yards per catch for Smith’s Bears teams before a gruesome back injury against Seattle ended his career.

23. Garrett Gilkey, G, Cleveland Browns

The Browns took Gilkey out of Division II Chadron State in the seventh round last year. As expected from a Division II player, Gilkey was quite raw in his first NFL training camp. But he possesses prototypical size and strength along with surprising mobility (important in Kyle Shanahan’s zone-blocking system) and a mean streak that sometimes runs over past the whistle. (He clashed with Browns nose tackle Phil Taylor repeatedly on one afternoon at OTAs this year.) The Browns are having a battle royal for their right guard spot, with veterans John Greco and Jason Pinkston as the leading contenders, but Gilkey could sneak out with a starting job.

24. Marquise Goodwin, WR, Buffalo Bills

Marquise Goodwin is fast. He is super-ridiculously fast. He ran a 4.27-second 40 at the 2013 combine, the fastest time for any drafted wide receiver since Darrius Heyward-Bey. Goodwin is so fast that his college stats were terrible because the Texas Longhorns didn’t have any quarterbacks who could actually get him the ball downfield. The Longhorns ended up giving him 34 carries over two seasons in order to try to get the ball in his hands, and he gained 371 yards on them. Last season, he averaged 16.6 yards on 17 catches and added a 31-yard gain on defensive pass interference. In order to develop into a starter, he’s going to have to learn how to beat man coverage on the rest of the route tree. But golly, he’s fast.

25. Patrick Omameh, G, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Omameh went undrafted a year ago and signed to the San Francisco 49ers’ practice squad. Tampa Bay plucked him from there in mid-October, and while he never appeared in a game, the Bucs clearly had plans for him. He goes into training camp in the lead for Tampa Bay’s right guard position. The scouting reports on Omameh a year ago dinged him for sometimes being unable to finish blocks or move properly to the second level, but he’s a consistent and powerful drive-blocker. His greatest attribute, however, is his intelligence. He was offered scholarships at MIT and Princeton before heading to Michigan, where he made academic All-Big Ten. What can we say, we’re suckers for a player with brains. Tune in next year when Kansas City’s sixth-round pick Dr. Laurent Duvernay-Tardif shows up on this list next to Baltimore fifth-rounder, budding mathematician and ESPN The Magazine contributor John Urschel.