Ohio State has a habit of producing wide receivers who outperform what their collegiate profiles suggest they should accomplish in the NFL. Michael Thomas posted a 39.6-percent (80th-percentile among qualified wide receivers) College Dominator Rating but broke out at the age of 21.5. He’s now the best receiver in the NFL. Terry McLaurin produced so little as a Buckeye that he did not even record a Breakout Age. McLaurin posted 919 yards as a rookie on an anemic Washington offense. K.J. Hill is next in line to prove that he can beat the odds of having a less than impressive collegiate profile.
Hill was a four-star prospect coming out of high school but chose to go to a college loaded with NFL-bound wide receiver talent. Because of this, he was never able to record a breakout season. He may have had more competition for targets than most receivers, but his non-breakout status is damning. The most notable names to not record a breakout include:
- Julian Edelman – Kent Sate’s quarterback
- Tyreek Hill – kicked out of Oklahoma State but possesses game-breaking speed
- Terry McLaurin – fellow Buckeye with 4.35 40-Yard Dash
- Danny Amendola – made an NFL living despite his 4th-percentile SPARQ-x score
- Devin Hester and Cordarrelle Patterson – primarily used as returners with (you guessed it) insane speed
K.J. Hill Advanced Stats & Metrics Profile w/ College Stats
The obvious common theme for the bulk of these players is speed and athleticism. Hill has none of this based on his 86.4 (26th-percentile) Speed Score and 112.3 (9th-percentile) Burst Score. Edelman did not play receiver in college. That leaves Amendola as the lone comp within the entire PlayerProfiler database that Hill can aspire to.
The two share many similarities, including low College YPRs, no breakouts, and poor athletic ability. They also both put up reasonable counting stats but didn’t record breakouts because of how much firepower their offenses produced. Amendola posted a 1,245-yard season but he played for a Texas Tech offense that approached 6,000 passing yards. Hill recorded 885 receiving yards but did so in a season when the Ohio State offense crested 5,000 passing yards.
Check out K.J. Hill on PlayerProfiler’s Updated Rookie Rankings:
Hill’s biggest accomplishment has been leading Ohio State, one of the three most talent-laden programs in the NCAA, in receptions twice. That means something but it also means less when all of those opportunities still don’t equate to a breakout.
Everything has to fall in place perfectly for Hill to ever make a useful fantasy impact. He needs a team to relinquish their entire load of slot snaps to him because he doesn’t have the athleticism to win on the outside. His quarterback has to be willing to pepper him with targets. Then he sill needs to secure an enormous portion of the targets thrown his way because he doesn’t figure to be a YAC monster or avid touchdown scorer.
All of that came together for Amendola in 2010 and he finished with 85 receptions, 689 yards, and three scores. Hill’s best-case scenario player had a best-case scenario season and was the WR29.
Matt Kelley compared Amendola, and his doppelganger Hill by extension, to a cheerleader. All he forgot to mention is that cheerleaders have more burst.
