Zay Flowers

Pos: WR

School: Boston College

Ht. 5’9″ 

Wt. 182

Games Watched: Rutgers, Florida State, Notre Dame

One Liner: Quick wide receiver who wins with speed, body control, and athletic ability

Strengths: 

  • Elite quickness. Flowers is a shifty, twitchy mover who can evade press coverage and beat defenders with the ball in his hands with his natural quickness and bursts in short areas. 
  • Very good long speed. Flowers can burn press coverage with his speed, and he has the long speed to evade pursuit as a ball carrier. His deep speed helps him at all 3 levels in a variety of route concepts. 
  • Very good body control. Flowers maintains great body control throughout his route, from the release through the stem into the catch point. Flowers operates at high speeds throughout his route and is able to maintain it with his body control.
  • Very good athleticism. Flowers is a plus athlete who wins pre-throw with his twitch and shiftiness as a route runner and can beat defensive players in pursuit with his agility and twitch.
  • Very good YAC ability. Flowers can win with shiftiness and is able to make people miss as a ball carrier, making him a threat at the next level as a punt and kick returner as well as a deep ball YAC threat.

Weaknesses:

  • Adequate route running. While Flowers can win in his route progression with his speed, quicks and body control, he lacks the proper footwork and technique that would consistently help him win as a route runner. He could look to improve his suddenness and angles at the stem of his route and clean up unnecessary steps.
  • Adequate frame. Flowers will be limited to a primarily slot role, based on his film alone. While he has bulked up, I question whether he has the footwork to win off press releases as an outside receiver at this stage of his career. He has the twitch and athletic ability to do it however. 
  • Adequate hands. Flowers is not a contested catch receiver as of right now and will struggle on 50/50 balls. He doesn’t have a great catch radius and will thus likely be delegated towards the slot at least early on in his career.

Overall Assessment: Zay Flowers is a shifty, quick receiver who has all the tools to be an excellent slot receiver at the next level. He has the YAC traits that many NFL teams are looking for right now in their receivers, and his raw talent allows him to be a solid route runner too. Flowers could look to add some more nuance to his game, but his skill right now makes him a viable slot receiver who has the upside to be a Swiss Army knife as a versatile weapon for any team that selects him. 

Scheme Fit: Motion Y receiver that has the potential to work as an X or Z with route running development.

Pick Projection: Top 32

Grade: 6.49