Transcription
This is USC wide receiver Mai Lemon. 3.5 yards per zone route. That's the best in the draft class by far in the NFL is playing more zone coverage than ever. So to me, it doesn't take a big genius to love Mai Lemon as a potential top overall pick. I loved how craft he is attacking off coverage. He settles against zone coverage very well. Then he also has great hand to kind of set up these yak opportunities when running all these uh breaking routes. 5'11, 192 pounds, a 45340 like you said at his proday 159 10 yard split. That might not be exciting or electric for everyone out there. My question to you Hayden is what if at all times he's playing at that four five3 speed and because of his craftiness and his routes, his feel for kind of the reach and the spacing of defensive backs, especially in zone coverage, especially in off coverage that he doesn't run into their area to kind of get slowed down. He is moving at the speed he wants to at every portion of his route. And to me, that's what makes him such a productive and NFL ready wide receiver already.
Yeah, he's going to hit the ground running. He's just that tempo and just like having the awareness when to kind of settle in, when to keep going, and then obviously it's the off covers. We both of us, we've both talked about this. It's just he gets lost so quickly against these safeties sitting over the top of him and you don't know which way he's going to break. And that's because he's such a good route runner. That's how you threaten uh a def defender is where the hell is this guy going to end up? It's not just the speed always. It's how do you get that he can run the entire route tree? Don't like necessarily love him like running go balls necessarily, but you can run post routes. You can run these big uh circus routes. You can obviously run the inbreaking routes. And on top of that, he has the the other ability versus other slot wide receivers, which is going up and grabbing the ball at the high point. His hands are just phenomenal. uh that's both just running on these crossing routes and also tracking the ball down the field. So, I think that's how I would label him as a slot receiver and style, but he has more elements of of the top outside wide receivers on top of it.
Let me list a couple stats and then we'll put kind of his game attached to those. So, of all the wide receivers in this class with 50 targets last year, he has the second highest yards per route run at 3.13 total inside and outside versus zone and versus man.
The third most missed tackles force actually in this class at 21. Yep.
He won 10 of 15 contested targets. We'll talk about those here in a moment. And then just a snap distribution here. 456 slot snaps this past season versus 222 out wide on passing downs. That was even more expanded to the slot. 70% of passing downs. That's where he lined up. And then 77 of his 109 targets were out of the slot this past season. And you know, a lot of people might say, well, I want my number one first round picks to be big bodied outside pass catchers and super athletes. I would say look across the NFL right now and the guys that are the most productive at this point are the ones who are always on the ground who always as you and I are going to continue to repeat through this video a feel for zone and like that is so important for these I'm not going to say pure slot players but primary primarily slot players because you have to be comfortable there. It's it's a non-negotiable. Uh and he does I think try to tell a story with his routes. You talked about the deception. He really gets on the cornerback's toes when eating up that cushion. And it is amazing how often they think he is breaking to the outside and so they point their shoulders, their head on these outside breakers and instead he's already moving to the inside. So, while he might not be, you know, the most explosive pass catcher out there or the the fastest or the quickest, uh, he does still put you in positions that you don't want to be, and that generates a ton of separation for him.
There's more times where the defender is literally pointed the opposite direction of where he's running. It's It's actually incredible that he's able to do this. So, yeah, that's where it's going to translate. This is 100 receptions per year if you get into the right offense. Like, this is the JSN comparison. He's much smaller than JSN, so I don't want to put that big of a label. It's very similar to the on Monro St. Brown. There's other lesser players who are very, very productive and yeah, he's mostly going to be in the slot. If you do want to put him in condensed formations in two wide receiver sets, absolutely physical enough to do that. I think that his man coverage skills are good. They're not elite when it's press uh man coverage, but a lot of these condensed sets, a lot of these times when you're in the slot, you're not facing strict press man coverage where obviously his lack of like complete twitch is going to hurt him a little bit, but offman coverage and stuff, you can still toy with them and I would still trust him. So, most of the NFL right now, he's going to be inside the slot in three wide receiver sets. No questions there. And then in two wide receiver sets, so much of the league is getting condensed formations using motion. He's going to be the focal point with that. And when you get him in motion, he's just so hard to cover because he toys with these defenders so much. So yeah, of course I would rather a 63 225lb x receiver with 43 speed. The reality is in this class you just don't get those. This is a a player that's getting paid 30 plus million dollars per year and I think inside the top 10 I feel very comfortable with them.
Just get you on your toes at all times. I mean these corners are are simply guessing with that. I I pulled and I sent them to producer weaves the top 15 or 16 target getters out of the slot in the NFL last season. I'm just going to rifle through these names. I know there's a graphic here, but Aman Ra, Janelle, Kosha, Lad, Josh DS, Puka, Debo, Devonte Smith, Jamar Chase, Chris Ave, Stefon Diggs, Ken Allen, uh, DK, Parker Washington, Z Flowers, Jacobe Myers, this is just this past season. We can obviously go back a decade, but kind of those top 16 names of the highest earning target getters in the slot, does his game remind you of any of them?
I mean, a lot of those guys, I mean, the Amman Ross St. Brown comp is like the the go-to comp. I kind of just agree with it for just like a
It's pretty much it's kind of what he is. Like I wanted to come up with something different just for you guys because you're watching this video, but it's kind of just exactly what he is.
Interesting. I thought you said I disagree with it cuz I slightly do. I don't know if he's as like powerful as Aman Ross Brown. And so much of Aman Ra's game is built on power. The issue to me when I was trying to come up with a comparison for him is that
he's about two inches shorter of some of the guys or three inches shorter of the ones I would compare him to Keenan Allen in terms of like the feel for that area and he plays taller than you know his 5 foot 11 listed height. You go and watch the contested grabs the back shoulders against Illinois. I mean two defenders tackling him while converging in his own too. Then the Iowa game was maybe one of the best tapes I've watched so far of any prospect. I mean, incredible stuff. Four straight difficult catches. One was off frame, the sideline toe tap out of structure.
Uh, then he climbs the ladder to go up and get it. And then he's just constantly attacking blind spots and he's plucking the ball off his frame
as well. Um, another name I brought up was Adam Thelen. And I understand like late career Adam Thielen might not be, you know,
right
the best comparison that people want to make out there, but don't say from that 2018 season he was incredible as he became a full-time starter. It's just the feel for the game that makes you play faster than maybe what you're going to be running out there with. And and that's why I always think like sure we want to always draft the best athletes, but at wide receiver it can matter less than almost any other position.
Yeah, I do think he's just pretty powerful. Maybe that's like not so much like after the catch where Monro is like really throwing guys. I do think Lemon can do that, but I do think his power is just at that catch point. It's just incredible what he's able to do. Some of the hits that he was able to absorb and and he's got that like squatty kind of frame which I do think helps him out, but really there's like this one post route where the ball was like not thrown on target and that's, you know, the USC quarterbacks not exactly just throwing absolute uh laser beams all the time. going up redirecting the route like going over his shoulder and tracking the ball while taking on big hits and stuff. So, I do think that's where there is some similarities to a Monro St. Brown who was not the fastest player out there by any means. I just think it's this is one of the easiest evaluations ever in the modern NFL. It's just like too high coverage, zone coverage, where do you win over the middle, off coverage, and you need a guy like this. So, he's not uh as good as like the Puka Nuas and JS. music one talent tier below that, but stylistically it's just exactly what he is.
Another difference to me is I don't know if I would attach him to the formation. Like I don't know if you really want to run consistent condensed splits with him that he is basically playing instead of your second tight end on the roster and pinning down a defensive end or cracking down on a linebacker. I kind of saw I mean we didn't have many of those reps. there were his best blocking I felt was when he was in the slot and working back multiple yards to get after a linebacker, but it's not like we saw him as, you know, a secondary tight end. And a lot of the guys that we've been mentioning, that really is what the NFL is. You know, you can say an 11 personnel, but he blocks like a a second tight end. I'll also add on the two wide receiver set stuff, playing outside,
his game against Notre Dame, I felt was a bit of a concern. that corner really got after him and he faced a bunch of
press coverage there. Uh I think he had like 20 of his 60 press coverage snaps were in that game alone. And then after again the Illinois games and the Iowa games, I was like riding high. And then I watched the one against Oregon, I also felt like the corners were in his hip pockets that they were really
competing with him at the catch point. And to me, that's where the lack of a second gear
came to be an issue was that final bit of creating separation or at the top of the route being able to pull away from corners and and even safeties and and slot guys. In those two games, I didn't see it as often as in others. And obviously, some of those defensive players are the best that he faced all season.
I saw this the same exact thing against Notre Dame where one of the guys who hasn't declared yet, he looks like an absolute specimen out there. He struggled against him. He also had a couple man coverage wins on the inside, too. I think it's going to be hard for him to be a top five, top 10 NFL wide receiver. Now, you don't need to be a top 10 wide receiver in the NFL to still be worth a top 10ish overall pick. And I think a lot of the teams from, you know, the Commanders down to the Ravens, like kind of in that that seven to 14 range. I think he fits a whole bunch of those offenses. I think that's a nice sweet spot for Mai Lemon. Obviously JSN fell a little bit further than that. I think that JSN's upsidees a little bit higher than Mai Lemon, but I do think it's just even if he doesn't have that second gear, the rest of the profile is just so automatic here.
You really see him weave between defenders. It really is amazing. Like he will first work around the underneath guy to not get slowed down.
Then he works between the gaps of the linebackers and the safeties and the ball is kind of lofted up and he'll just climb the ladder to go up and get it and come down with a 17 yard catch. It really is amazing to me how he plays at his own pace, albeit the paces four, five, three, and yet other guys who run faster can get slowed down because they don't have just the same feel for the game. And then when it's along the sideline, he is always getting a second foot down. Like he knows exactly where he is on the field. And those definitely stood out to me. I I'm not sure if he's the guy that you want to like power through a tackler on third or fourth down with the ball in his hands. And I'm not sure like if his mistack was forced or his yards after catch are going to completely translate once there are better NFL athletes. But uh
you know there's plenty of great aspects to his game on top of it. Um before we get out of here I did want to ask you two things. One there's been a lot of concerns just about Mailman throughout this process. First on his 40 his heels were clicking on the ground. So there's like running form.
Yeah there's some running form concerns here. And the other was, let's say, his combine interviews and the one that we saw, you know, at the podium, uh, he had some interesting mannerisms to him. Do you have any comments on either of these?
I'm not going to defend him for for any of these things. I don't know the guy. I will say this, he did not seem like he was totally locked in on some of the stuff. Like there was like even the the one drill where he's first in line, wasn't paying attention, then just like completely botched the drill. I also heard from Dane Bugler on one of his shows where he was the guy that's saying he's the most competitive guy in the draft and then is opting out a bunch of the drills. I think that the the 40 time and just like the look of it did not seem like somebody that was like completely locked into the training port of uh running a 40 yard dash. And then I just go back to the tape after I I mean I watched this and then I went back to the tape and I'm like man
he looks like a totally different player.
He's just a monster. I don't know what to tell you guys man. So like yes, like if I had more insight on to it, then yeah, maybe I can say like, well, he's not doing this, this, and this. I I tried to go back with that just like laser focused like was my mind playing tricks on me and I just couldn't find anything.
The the crazy part is he plays the game like he watches tape 24 hours a day.
Yes. And he's and that he's super tough, you know? He's tough and he's locked in. He's got great feel. And then everything else about this was like not that. I don't get it. I don't know.
Uh did you want to throw any comparisons before we got out of here? Cuz I threw out mine.
Um I do like the the one. Yeah, I I think he's just a the tier below, you know, the guys that he's always comped to. Ammon, Ross, St. Brown, JSN. I think he's probably finished one tier below those. You can draft that guy inside the top 15. Feel very good about it. I don't think he's going to be a top five receiver in the NFL and I don't think that should prevent you from wanting him.
All right, that does it. We've got plenty of other wide receiver prospect videos here on the channel along with quarterbacks and running backs and tight ends. So, if you enjoyed this one, we don't share notes as you can tell. We get to hear the other person's opinion on the spot. Hit that subscribe button and check out another one. See over