Devaughn Vele caught 41 passes and 3 TDs last year. While that isn’t much, that makes him the most productive wide receiver selected in the seventh round in the last 10 years.
It’s tough finding good receivers in the late rounds. In general with this position, the talent tends to get identified and picked early.
I bring the issue up because I was looking at rookie running backs last year, noticing that there’s been only one good/decent rookie running back in the last 10 years that was selected in both the sixth round (Elijah Mitchell) and the seventh (Isiah Pacheco). At the position, it’s actually more common to find somebody decent who wasn’t drafted at all.
I wanted to go back and look at the same numbers for wide receivers.
It’s pretty spartan in the late rounds. Vele (pictured) put up lesser numbers but caught 10 more passes than anybody else chosen in that round. No other wide receiver chosen in that round finished with even 300 yards. Via PPR scoring, Vele ranked 76th at the position. Nobody else made the top 85.
It’s been similarly dire of late in the sixth round. DeMario Douglas has been the best of the last 10 years, but with hardly notable numbers (49 catches, 561 yards, no touchdowns). He’s been the only sixth-round wide receiver who’s ranked higher than 70th in PPR scoring as a rookie in the last 10 years.
The Douglas-Vele tandem falls short of the Pacheco-Mitchell pair.
It’s in the fifth round where you start to see some real receivers still on the road. Puka Nacua, Tyreek Hill, Stefon Diggs. Hill was pushed down to that round after getting kicked off the Oklahoma State team following a domestic violence incident.
Unlike with running backs, there hasn’t been much talent showing up at wide receiver that simply went undrafted. At least not recently (Rod Smith and Wes Welker went undrafted). In the current NFL, Jakobi Meyers looks like the best of the undrafted guys, with Rashid Shaheed being a good deep-all guy for the Saints. But in the last 10 years, just one with top-65 numbers in the last 10 years (with Keelan Cole getting hot for the Jaguars in 2017).
For our current purposes, these stats suggest we shouldn’t be too hopeful about late-round wide receivers going much of anything in 2025. If there’s a late round guy who seems to have a good fit of some kind, we can bookmark that player, watching him more closely in the preseason. But there should be some supporting evidence of some kind before selecting said player with any realistic hope of anything good happening.
| UNDRAFTED BEST 10 WIDE RECEIVERS | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Player | No | Yards | Avg | TD | PPR | Rk |
| 2017 | Keelan Cole, Jac. | 42 | 748 | 17.8 | 3 | 134.8 | 48 |
| 2019 | Steven Sims, Was. | 34 | 310 | 9.1 | 4 | 109.5 | 66 |
| 2016 | Robby Anderson, NYJ | 42 | 587 | 14.0 | 2 | 116.9 | 68 |
| 2022 | Rashid Shaheed, N.O. | 28 | 488 | 17.4 | 2 | 100.5 | 74 |
| 2019 | Preston Williams, Mia. | 32 | 428 | 13.4 | 3 | 92.8 | 77 |
| 2024 | Jalen Coker, Car. | 32 | 478 | 14.9 | 2 | 92.8 | 83 |
| 2019 | Jakobi Meyers, N.E. | 26 | 359 | 13.8 | 0 | 61.9 | 98 |
| 2019 | Greg Ward, Phil. | 28 | 254 | 9.1 | 1 | 59.9 | 101 |
| 2023 | Jake Bobo, Sea. | 19 | 196 | 10.3 | 2 | 56.9 | 106 |
| 2017 | Kendrick Bourne, S.F. | 16 | 257 | 16.1 | 0 | 41.7 | 118 |
| 7TH ROUND BEST 10 WIDE RECEIVERS | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Player | No | Yards | Avg | TD | PPR | Rk |
| 2024 | Devaughn Vele, Den. | 41 | 475 | 11.6 | 3 | 106.5 | 76 |
| 2019 | Olabisi Johnson, Min. | 31 | 294 | 9.5 | 3 | 79.0 | 86 |
| 2016 | Charone Peake, NYJ | 19 | 186 | 9.8 | 0 | 43.6 | 117 |
| 2018 | Marcell Ateman, Oak. | 15 | 154 | 10.3 | 1 | 36.4 | 136 |
| 2018 | Richie James, S.F. | 9 | 130 | 14.4 | 1 | 34.0 | 138 |
| 2023 | Ronnie Bell, S.F. | 6 | 68 | 11.3 | 3 | 30.8 | 140 |
| 2022 | Samori Toure, G.B. | 5 | 82 | 16.4 | 1 | 19.2 | 149 |
| 2021 | Ben Skowronek, LAR | 11 | 133 | 12.1 | 0 | 24.3 | 150 |
| 2016 | Demarcus Ayers, Pitt. | 6 | 53 | 8.8 | 1 | 16.1 | 152 |
| 2018 | Trey Quinn, Was. | 9 | 75 | 8.3 | 1 | 22.5 | 154 |
| 6TH ROUND BEST 10 WIDE RECEIVERS | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Player | No | Yards | Avg | TD | PPR | Rk |
| 2023 | DeMario Douglas, N.E. | 49 | 561 | 11.5 | 0 | 109.2 | 64 |
| 2023 | Trey Palmer, T.B. | 39 | 385 | 9.9 | 3 | 97.7 | 70 |
| 2019 | Kelvin Harmon, Was. | 30 | 365 | 12.2 | 0 | 67.1 | 92 |
| 2023 | A.T. Perry, N.O. | 12 | 246 | 20.5 | 4 | 60.6 | 100 |
| 2015 | Quincy Enunwa, NYJ | 22 | 315 | 14.3 | 0 | 53.5 | 105 |
| 2024 | Malik Washington, Mia. | 26 | 223 | 8.6 | 0 | 56.8 | 108 |
| 2020 | Donovan Peoples-Jones, Cle. | 14 | 304 | 21.7 | 2 | 58.4 | 110 |
| 2023 | Andrei Iosivas, Cin. | 15 | 116 | 7.7 | 4 | 50.6 | 111 |
| 2019 | KeeSean Johnson, Ari. | 21 | 187 | 8.9 | 1 | 48.0 | 112 |
| 2024 | Jordan Whittington, LAR | 22 | 293 | 13.3 | 0 | 52.5 | 114 |
| 5TH ROUND BEST 10 WIDE RECEIVERS | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Player | No | Yards | Avg | TD | PPR | Rk |
| 2023 | Puka Nacua, LAR | 105 | 1,486 | 14.2 | 6 | 298.5 | 4 |
| 2016 | Tyreek Hill, K.C. | 61 | 593 | 9.7 | 6 | 219.0 | 18 |
| 2019 | Darius Slayton, NYG | 48 | 740 | 15.4 | 8 | 170.0 | 37 |
| 2015 | Stefon Diggs, Min. | 52 | 720 | 13.9 | 4 | 149.3 | 47 |
| 2020 | Darnell Mooney, Chi. | 61 | 631 | 10.3 | 4 | 152.1 | 50 |
| 2019 | Hunter Renfrow, Oak. | 49 | 605 | 12.4 | 4 | 133.5 | 55 |
| 2023 | Dontayvion Wicks, G.B. | 39 | 581 | 14.9 | 4 | 121.9 | 57 |
| 2018 | Marquez Valdes-Scantling, G.B. | 38 | 581 | 15.3 | 2 | 111.0 | 66 |
| 2017 | Trent Taylor, S.F. | 43 | 430 | 10.0 | 2 | 98.0 | 68 |
| 2016 | Tajae Sharpe, Ten. | 41 | 522 | 12.7 | 2 | 105.3 | 73 |
—Ian Allan