Alabama football: NFL Draft expert thinks Jaylen Waddle is better than DeVonta Smith
DeVonta Smith may be the Heisman winner, but fellow Alabama football wide receiver Jaylen Waddle is the better NFL Draft prospect, according to Daniel Jeremiah.
The Alabama football juggernaut has churned out some incredibly impressive wide receivers over the years. The 2021 NFL Draft features two of them.
Between DeVonta Smith and Jaylen Waddle, which is the better prospect?
You might think Smith would win that battle considering the hefty Heisman Trophy sitting on his mantlepiece, but for NFL.com analyst Daniel Jeremiah, it’s Waddle who really stands out.
“I ended up moving Jaylen Waddle up to the No. 2 receiver spot … he moves up to No. 6 on my overall board,” Jeremiah said on a recent episode of the Move The Sticks Podcast. “I went back and watched all of his 2019 targets together with what we saw this year. This dude, he’s got some freaky stuff to him. He is a really, really talented kid, a special kid.
It’s not just Smith who Waddle has beat in Jeremiah’s estimation, either.
“I was comparing him to the guys we had last year from Alabama,” he said. “To me, if you put Jeudy and Ruggs and DeVonta Smith and Waddle, I thought Waddle was the most impressive tape of any of the four.”
Waddle and Smith will give 4 Alabama receivers taken in the first round of the last 2 NFL Drafts
It would be fascinating to see how things would have panned out if Waddle had been healthy for all of 2020. He only featured in four regular-season games, putting up 591 yards and four touchdowns. He averaged 139 yards per game.
It’s not a terrible stretch to think he might have been capable of doing what Smith did over the course of the season: racking up 1,856 yards and 23 touchdowns en route to the ultimate prizes in college football.
Jeremiah has Waddle ranked No. 6 overall on his latest NFL Draft prospects ranking, ahead of Smith at No. 8. There isn’t a lot to separate the two.
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