Top 10 wide receivers in the 2021 NFL Draft

#5 2021 NFL Draft Prospect: Kadarius Toney (Florida)

5’ 11”, 190 pounds; SR

Kadarius Toney

A three-star recruit as a quarterback coming out of high school, Kadarius Toney took a little bit to transition to catching passes and he was fighting through some injuries early on. He only caught 50 passes for 606 yards and two touchdowns through his first three years with the Gators, as more of a gadget-play specialist.

Last season he touched the ball 89 times for 1145 yards and 11 touchdowns, plus he added another score on a punt return, as one of the most dangerous players in the SEC, earning himself second-team all-conference accolades.

When we talk about “instant acceleration”, Toney being at full speed after two or three steps is what that means. His explosiveness and quickness are truly on another level, but you also see him win against safeties vertically from the slot routinely, where he may be matched up with somebody about eight yards off at the snap and have the defender in a trail position from ten yards downfield on.

Check out his touchdown in the third quarter against Texas A&M this past season to see exactly what I mean. That’s how he threatens off the line instantly and has defenders on their heels. Toney can make defenders look bad on jerk routes, with the way he can drop his weight and re-accelerate off either foot.

His sudden explosiveness is a real problem off picks or getting separation off motion. He routinely utilizes slide releases, to be able to attack either way, while winning a lot with sudden bursts and hesitation. A bunch of times, he will stem inside and then really snap his head around on deep out routes, to create immediate separation out of those breaks.

He can come to a jump-stop and stutter at the top before beating a linebacker across his face on hook-drops. You see a lot of those Keenan Allen-like hops steps and almost dead-legs, as a distinctive overall route-runner. The Gators actually put Toney in the backfield a couple of times against Alabama to create mismatches against their STAR backers on option and wheel routes.

Whenever Toney catches the ball, he hits a different gear. He is very jittery and can get past defenders with some unique moves. A lot of guys can break ankles – with this guy, I feel like he’s tearing ACLs with the stuff he does in the open field. He was nicknamed “the human joystick”, because of the twitchiness, the way he can drop his knees and ankles, come to a dead stop and then explode out of it again.

Toney has some pretty good contact balance for his size, where you see him bounce off some hits or keep on running through swiping arms. On bubble screens, if you give him a lane just for a second, he can burst through it and force the rest of the defense to take flat angles to the sideline. Plus, he has that dynamic burst to be able to convert on third-and-long, when he just catches a short out route and blows by guys.

When you get him the ball over the middle after beating a linebacker that way, he can become dangerous to deal with, because he has the speed to just keep going to the opposite sideline, but also foot-fake defenders out of their cleats. Over these last two seasons, Toney broke 32 tackles on 80 combined catches. Because of his dynamic abilities with the ball in his hands, he was used a lot as deception on bubbles and speed sweep fakes.

His 57-yard touchdown last year versus South Carolina was just ridiculous, where he made his man in coverage look like a defender in Madden, who had stumbled on a tackling attempt, and then knifed through three defenders trying to punch at the ball or bring him down. And while it’s not a huge part of the offense, he has had some pretty good moments attacking the ball in the air and working the sideline. As a return man, how deceptive he is with head-fakes and the way he sets up defenders makes him tough to bring down as the first defender.

However, injuries have limited Toney to only 510 snaps over his first three years at Florida and it took him until this past season to produce at least 300 yards through the air. He only has a 74 ½-inch wingspan and as much as we bang Alabama’s Devonta Smith, if you can trust the school measurements (which you can’t really, but let’s say they changed the numbers about the same), Toney played at just two pounds heavier.

There are definitely concerns about his slim frame as well and he won’t give you a whole lot in 50-50 ball situations. And unlike Smith, we have barely seen him operate on the perimeter or deal with press-coverage. At this point, Toney is not a super consistent or technically refined route-runner necessarily – it’s more about his explosiveness. On whip routes, he needs to do a better job of dropping his weight, in order to be able to pivot off that inside foot and explode out of it.

This is the most slippery and weirdly flexible receiver in this class. While the experience is very limited and we haven’t seen him work on the outside a whole lot (82.4 percent of snaps in the slot last season), I think with the way he can avoid contact and burst off the line, Toney can play some flanker, even though he will primarily do his damage in-between the hashes and vertically down the seams.

Kyle Trask had a passe rating of 111+ at all three areas (under 10, 10-19 and 20+ yards) targeting Toney and he only dropped three on 123 catchable passes his way. He is a weapon catching, running and returning the ball, who you can manufacture touches for, as he grows as a route-runner and all-around receiver.