Gang Green Nation
A curious case of a player whose value seems to be going down late in the process.
Olu Fashanu, a tackle out of Penn State, is widely viewed as one of the top prospects in the upcoming 2024 NFL Draft.
While he is a consensus first round pick, it isn’t clear where he will be selected. In fact his stock seems to be marginally decreasing the deeper we get into the process.
The website NFLMockDraftDatabase.com keeps track of mock drafts from across the internet (as one might expect from a website with that name). While Fashanu spent much of the month of January as a consensus top 6-7 pick, recent mocks have him going between 14 and 17.
Now you might note that mock drafts are done by writers and not necessarily indicative of how teams value a player. It’s possible the mocks are wrong.
However, even media types who are well connected in the league seem to be dropping Fashanu a bit. NFL Network’s Dan Jeremiah, who is well-connected in league front offices, suggested in a conference call prior to the NFL Scouting Combine that Fashanu was an unrealistic target for the Jets at 10. Less than a month later, Jeremiah had Fashanu falling all the way to 14 in a mock draft he constructed.
ESPN’s Matt Miller had Fashanu as a top five pick in a December mock after the conclusion of Penn State’s regular season. His latest has Fashanu falling out of the top ten.
Fashanu’s fall hasn’t been precipitous. Even the most pessimistic prognosticator seems to still have him as a top 20 pick. Still it is worth asking what the reason is for the decline in his stock.
This would normally be the point in an article like this where the author rails about actual production in games matters more than the underwear Olympics of the NFL Scouting Combine.
I, however, will not do that. It isn’t constructive. Quite frankly, we should all know by now that college production does not necessarily equate to success in the pro game. Practice squads are littered with all conference performers.
We also have strong data suggesting that certain Combine drills actually do offer predictive value for success on the next level.
That said, almost all of Fashanu’s measurables were at least average, and some are well above average.
Sometimes a player’s stock changes after his final college game, and there is a good reason for it. There have been instances in the past where medical red flags have emerged, and doctors have concluded a player’s body is unlikely to hold up. A poor Combine performance in a meaningful drill can send teams back to the film where they recognize a previously hidden problem. There are some other reasons a player’s stock can fall in the spring.
In this case, there isn’t proof of any such thing.
There is one area of the Combine that conceivably could have raised some concerns about Fashanu.
MockDraftable.com has data on the measurements...
