That was an interesting three-way battle involving Kansas City, Carolina and Buffalo at the end of the first round of the draft. All three teams selected wide receivers, and all did so after trading with each other. Xavier Worthy, Xavier Legette and Keon Coleman will be compared for the duration of their careers.

My leaning, after watching all of the passes thrown to those guys last year, is that Carolina looks like the favorite to emerge as the winner of this group. Legette to me looks like the kind of guy where people might be looking back in a couple of years, wondering how he made it to the final pick of the round.

If we look at just the 10 best plays for each guy last year, Legette was definitely the most impressive. I see more ability to adjust and track long balls, including three where he high-pointed the ball over a defender who had him covered. And I saw a couple of catches where he turned on the jets after the ball was in his hands, pulling away for 75-yard touchdowns. I saw another couple plays where he carried defenders for 7 and 10 yards. (In the play-by-play breakdown at the end of this article, I have tagged with black dots the plays you’ll want to look closely at.)

There have been a bunch of large, physical receivers that have come out of South Carolina, with Sterling Sharpe, Deebo Samuel and Alshon Jeffery leading the way, and Legette last year looked like a worthy addition to that group. There’s some Terrell Owens and Brandon Marshall in his game.

With these three 2024 receivers, Legette is arguably the No. 1 guy physically. The Panthers have him listed at 6-foot-3 and 227 pounds, and he ran 4.39 at the combine. Coleman has similar size (6-4, 215) but ran only 4.61 at the combine. (There were a couple of long Legette touchdowns last year that would not have occurred had we teleported Coleman into the situation.)

(Note: sizes on those guys were a little different at the combine, with Legette measured 2 inches shorter and 6 pounds lighter, and Coleman measuring 1 inch shorter and 2 pounds lighter.)

Worthy is a different flavor of receiver. He ran the record 4.21 at the combine but measures only 5-foot-11 and 165 pounds. With the speed, you might think Worthy would be the best deep threat of these guys, but size is also a factor on those plays, providing the QB with a bigger target, and with more ability to win in contested situations. On plays where the receiver was trying to make the catch at least 20 yards downfield last year, Worthy caught only 6 of 21 passes, with just one touchdown. Legette went 10 of 20 on those plays, with 3 TDs.

I’ve looked at a half dozen of these second-tier receivers in the last week, and Legette has been by far the best at high-pointing long balls. Almost too much. There was at least one I saw where he could have made the catch without going airborne (gaining a lot more yards). It reminded me of Terry Glenn; I remember him doing that a bunch, turning some long touchdowns into long non-scoring receptions.

Carolina has a pair of other receivers who’ve had 100-catch seasons, Diontae Johnson and Adam Thielen. With their experience, I suppose there will be areas where they’ll be running ahead of Legette for now. Especially Johnson (Thielen is getting long in the tooth). But I expect it won’t take many practices this summer before they figure out that Legette is a lot better than Johnson or Thielen at winning in contested situations on long throws. Some players are good at that – Mike Williams, Mike Evans – and Legette has some of that.

Carolina was sitting at 33 and decided to give up the 141st pick to move up a spot. It could have stood pat and settled for Coleman or hoped Legette lasted one more pick, but it didn’t want to do that. It believes Legette is better.

The Panthers have fired a couple of second-round picks on wide receivers in recent years and haven’t gotten much out of either (Jonathan Mingo and Terrace Marshall). But neither of those guys coming in were prospects on par with Legette.

In the last week, I have taken deep dives on three other receivers – Roman Wilson, Ladd McConkey, Ricky Pearsall. McConkey has the interesting situation, with the possibility of leading his team in receiving as a rookie. But Legette (to me) looks like he’s physically way ahead of all of those guys – a big, fast, playmaker kind of guy who can do things a lot of receivers can’t. While Pearsall was picked before Legette, I have to believe that the vast majority of NFL teams had Legette higher on their boards.

While I love Legette’s upside, it makes sense to also run down some of his flaws. He wasn’t much of a factor in his first four years at South Carolina (just 18 catches as a junior, and under 10 in his other three seasons). He’s 23, so perhaps closer to his ceiling as a player.

As a larger guy, he’s not sudden. He needs to build up a head of steam. He’s not quick or elusive. If we look just at the short, quick throws at the line of scrimmage, Worthy was a lot better in those situations at using his speed and elusive to unexpectedly get around the edge when he was seemingly pinned down. For Legette, a lot of those plays didn’t result in much. He averaged over a catch less per play on those catches.

On the boo-boo report, I saw one concentration drop and a couple of other throws where he perhaps should have come down with the ball. (Should we give him half of a drop on those?) His worst miscue came on a swing pass (that wasn’t a pass) against Clemson; he dropped it, and it got scooped for a 42-yard touchdown the other way.

But I like Legette. While both Worthy and Coleman are going to teams with better quarterbacks, my leaning today is that Legette will wind up being the best of these three receivers.

For the stats below, their unofficial (tabulated off the cutups on YouTube). I’m missing 10 of Legette’s catches. I know that includes 7 from the Jacksonville State game, but with that being a smaller school, I didn’t bother trying to run those down. And there were a couple of sideways passes that may have been runs rather than catches (and versa-vice).

In the “range” column of table, I’m separating the stats based on how far downfield Legette was when the ball showed up, with “BLOS” = behind the line of scrimmage, “short” = 0-9 yards, “medium” = 10-19 yards and “long” = 20-plus.

—Ian Allan