Top 10 wide receivers in the 2021 NFL Draft

#7 2021 NFL Draft Prospect: Rondale Moore (Purdue)

5’ 7”, 180 pounds; JR

Rondale Moore

One of the top recruits in the Boilermakers’ recent history (just outside the top 200 overall), Rondale Moore put his stamp on college football right away, as he went for just almost 1500 scrimmage yards and 14 touchdowns his freshman season, earning consensus All-American honors.

In the two years, he has been plagued by injury, as he appeared in just seven games and combined for 657 receiving yards, while reaching the end-zone only three times. However, with crazy testing at his pro day, he has kind of put his name back on the map.

The one word that comes to mind right away when watching Moore is “juice”. He obviously is far from prototype measurements, but this little dynamite showed that he could produce big plays in all facets pretty much like nobody else in the country could. In his first game as a Boilermaker, Moore put up 188 yards and two touchdowns from scrimmage.

He had seven more games with at least 100 yards as a freshman and absolutely went off in Purdue’s upset win over Ohio State. He can freeze defenders that have inside leverage on him with some of that foot-fire and then beat those guys across their face on slant routes. You also see it a lot on pick-plays, where he hesitates off the line and then explodes one way, to allow his teammates to wall off his defender.

Moore can work in different speeds, change up his footwork on the fly and be swift with getting around defenders as a route-runner. He is patient with setting up his routes, but then sudden to explode out of his breaks. At times, he comes to an almost complete stop, but then he plants that foot in the ground and his man is immediately trying to run him down from behind.

Moore has the ankle flexibility to bend off the inside foot in sudden fashion on out routes, without having to throttle down at all. He may have a defender on his hip as he pushes vertically and then get three-four yards of separation when he snaps off that route.

At the same time, he can put some English on those routes and put defenders on their heels further off the line. Purdue let him run a lot of out-routes, drags and screens, where they know he can gain separation and make things happen after the catch. And he could become a nightmare on double-moves off those, with some whip routes that he already ran and other stuff.

That start-stop ability with the ball in his hands is second to none for Moore. On plays out to the sideline, you see him pause momentarily and then get around defenders, who thought they just had the right angle against him. Moore is super shifty in tight spaces and then so elusive in the open field, that you would think he is glazed with butter. Plus, his contact balance for a 180-pound receiver is just absurd, bouncing and spinning off would-be-tacklers constantly. That’s probably because he routinely squats 600 pounds(!). Spins, hesitation moves and foot-fakes are all part of his arsenal. Overall, Moore forced a FBS-high 37 missed tackles and gained 892 yards after the catch in 2018 and then he broke another 47 tackles on 178 catches these last two years.

You see him get out of so many situations, where you almost want to skip to the next play, because you think he is all wrapped up, but all of a sudden he somehow gets free again and defenders get back to running after him, often times he will use that off-hand to regain his balance and quickly getting back on his feet again.

He simply doesn’t drop the ball – he had a 92-percent catch rate on catchable passes as a freshman and didn’t drop any balls last season. Moore shows excellent concentration tracking the ball down the field, often times when underthrown and he has to adjust to it by slowing down and dealing with it, as if it were punts, or the ball coming in on weird angles.

The obvious question mark with Moore is if he can stay healthy going forward. As a freshman, he looked like he would dominate college football for three years, but in 2019, he was battling hamstring injuries and was limited to just four games and then last season, he was limited to three games due to an undisclosed injury.

Moore was mostly used as a gadget player early on by Purdue and injuries have stunted his growth of becoming an every-down receiver. More than a third of his career receptions came on screens and less than 20 came in the 10-19 yard area, while spending only 118 career snaps on the outside. So it was all quick touches or over-the-top stuff. Moore came in even two inches shorter than even expected at his pro day at 5’ 7”.

So with at least equally short arms, his catch radius is minimal for any receiver in the pros. You see him have some problems with passes thrown slightly behind him or when he has to dive for a ball near his shoe-strings, rather than being able to reach down and keep going. As a return man, he can get a little too cute, reversing field and trying to always go for the big play, rather than taking what is there horizontally first.

You can’t take last season too seriously, because there was so much insecurity about the Big Ten season and Moore wasn’t allowed to really run routes. Now, he was certainly a gadget player for a lot of his career with Purdue, but we have seen him be dynamic out of his breaks and win as a route-runner. He just brings that juice to an offense, to where he can go the distance on any given snap.

He is certainly not the most complete receiver and he will need work with his intermediate route-patterns, simply because he wasn’t asked to do a whole lot of it, but he has superstar potential, if he can just stay healthy. His first touch of 2020 went for 33 yards on a jet sweep and then he scored on another one of those the next time his name was called against Minnesota.

Moreover, he reminded us of his explosiveness at Purdue’s pro day, when he ran a 4.29 in the 40 and had a 42.5-inch vertical.