Another key question, when contemplating a bust, is the ability to surpass current concerns. We might see a player, oh I don’t know, standing 6-foot-2 and weighing 209 pounds, who can run a 40-yard dash in the 4.20 range. However, this hypothetical player might have dropped seven out of his 54 catchable targets in his senior year, for a 14% drop rate. Yet, people say that with practice he might be able to correct this hands issue. This is the interesting question about Breshad Perriman.

There’s a piece of work I did for numberFire a long time ago that examined the likelihood of a receiver with catching issues improving his abilities in the pros. The summary of my research: “Of the 172 players we started with, 17.44% never touched the ball in their careers (or had a negative NEP), 40.7% reached an NEP threshold qualifying them as “average”, and just 4.07% became top-level talent.”

Perriman -- drafted with the 26th Overall selection in this year’s Draft -- will have a lot of hurdles to overcome in his time in the pros, but this will be one of the largest.