OU NFL Draft Prospects Not Sterling, but WR Shepard Is Best of Bunch
By Chip Rouse
Most every sports fan is aware of this, but in case you’re not one who is – aware, that is – the annual NFL Draft is this week. If you are a Sooner fan, there may be good reason for not knowing or caring, because this is not a particularly banner year for OU NFL draft prospects.
We wrote previously that no prospects out of the University of Oklahoma are likely to be drafted in Thursday night’s opening round of the 2016 NFL Draft.
It could even be that way through Round 2, although there is a better than good chance that a team looking for a wide receiver will take OU’s Sterling Shepard off the board somewhere in the first 64 picks of this year’s annual draft extravaganza.
ESPN NFL Insider KC Joyner wrote in a piece published several days ago on ESPN.com that Shepard is a well-kept secret and could be one of the steals in the NFL Draft later this week.
Here is what Joyner wrote about the Sooner star receiver:
“Shepard’s downfield metrics are strong at first glance, as he ranked fifth in vertical yards (643), sixth in vertical touchdowns (7), tied for seventh in stretch vertical touchdowns (4) and 18th in stretch vertical yards (315).”
Here’s the big catch (no pun, intended) regarding Shepard, in Joyner’s view: “What makes those numbers even more powerful is that he tallied them despite placing 34th in vertical targets per game (3.6) and tied for 72nd in stretch vertical targets per game (1.4). One reason for this is Shepard had zero drops on vertical targets, something that only five of the 19 wide receivers with 20 or more vertical receptions were able to do.”
Shepard has been quietly moving up in mock drafts over the last month or so. Mel Kiper, the widely followed NFL/college football draft analyst, has Shepard as the 43rd best draft prospect in this year’s NFL Draft. If the teams were to select the best player available. that would place the OU wide receiver somewhere around the middle of the second round.
Based on Kiper’s prospect list, Shepard ranks as the fifth best wide receiver available in the draft. The four Kiper rates ahead of Shepard are Josh Doctson of TCU (No. 11), Laquon Treadwell of Ole Miss (17), Baylor’s Corey Coleman (22) and Will Fuller of Notre Dame (31).
One caveat, however, Kiper’s projections in his final Big Board of Top 300 NFL Prospects, issued three days before the 2016 draft, are not a reflection of the order in which they will be drafted, but rather how he ranks them as prospects, regardless of position.
Kiper’s Top 300 Prospects heading into the opening round of this year’s draft on Thursday includes six Oklahoma players. Following Shepard at No. 43 are defensive end Charles Tapper (65), linebacker Eric Striker (124), defensive back Zack Sanchez (161), linebacker Dominque Alexander (199) and linebacker Devante Bond (244).
A total of 224 players will be selected by the 32 participating NFL teams in the seven rounds that constitute this week’s annual spring draft.
The Sooners are likely to have four and possibly five players selected in the draft, which would make it one of the smallest draft classes under OU head coach Bob Stoops. The fewest number of OU players selected in the NFL Draft during Stoops 17 seasons has been two in 2000 (following Stoops’ first season at Oklahoma).
In only one year (1995) since the first NFL Draft in 1936 has a player from Oklahoma not been selected in the draft.