Print media: Like football, it's a game of inches. Magazine's only got so many; can't go devoting precious real estate to every kid from Directional-Directional U that will be lucky to make an NFL roster. And so, edge cases fall by the wayside.
Now that the work of arranging the cream of the crop in columns is nearly done, we have some idea of the guys whose odds at making an impact in NFL box scores were just a little too long to get a blurb.
But as always happens, a few will overcome those odds. Here are some of the rookies that just might.
Cole Payton
QB, Philadelphia
Sometimes, you just get a feeling. Gnawing through another draft cycle's worth of footage on 60-odd college players, your eyes can begin to glaze over just a tad. Then some tape with some real sizzle pops up and gets the heart pumping again.
Payton is that kind of cat. At 6-3/232 with 10" hands and an anti-aircraft gun for an arm, the only thing you might change about him physically is making him right-handed. On top of that, he ripped a 4.56 40 at the combine, and a vertical better than most of the receivers. You can count on one hand the guys at this position who are more dynamic than Payton is in the open field, quite possibly with fingers left over.
Now for the reality check: Yes, he went to North Dakota; yes, he only started the one season; yes, he's almost 24; yes, last year he completed just 161 passes in 13 games; yes, the Eagles already have a franchise quarterback. Not great! All that aside, guys with Payton's combination of gifts do not come along all that often. If he can show any ability to read defenses and throw the ball in the intermediate part of the field then Payton will get his shot at some point.
Eli Heidenreich
RB/WR, Pittsburgh
Another high athleticism guy with some major projectability question marks is Navy's Eli Heidenreich. Heidenreich caught 51 passes last year (by their standards the Midshipmen got pass happy for him, averaging a whopping 14 pass attempts per game), turning it into a gaudy 941 yards (18.5 per reception). Huge numbers for a running back.
Of course, Heidenreich isn't exactly a running back: While he technically took 77 handoffs last fall, less than half a dozen of them were between the tackles. He was used a lot around the line of scrimmage but also saw a lot of work downfield (again, for a Navy guy). That makes him tricky to figure out: He has no real experience as a running back, and at a waify 6-0/198 he probably can't handle more than the occasional handoff anyway. And with just 2nd percentile arm length for a receiver, his days of beating defenses over the top are likely mostly over. But while his path to fantasy notoriety would appear to be fairly narrow, it is most definitely an intriguing one.
Seth McGowan
RB, Indianapolis
McGowan (6-0/223, 4.49 40, elite vertical/broad jump) is your token freak athlete with major production and off the field concerns. He's also older than Bijan Robinson: A four-star recruit as one of the top RBs of the 2020 class, a 2021 felony robbery conviction knocked him out of D-I football for three years.
Arriving in the NFL already on his second conduct strike, McGowan probably wouldn't rate a shoutout but for the landing spot. Indianapolis has had a howling void at the backup running back spot since Zack Moss departed for Cincinnati, and they were so impressed with what DJ Giddens showed as a rookie that they kept Jonathan Taylor on the field more than any other running back in the league, wire to wire. McGowan has the size, speed and all-around game to be the next Joe Mixon if things break right for him — and he does a convincing enough choir boy impression over the summer.
Brenen Thompson
WR, L.A. Chargers
Pretty simple paint-by-numbers argument for Thompson, who in a dink-and-dunk world was able to get his the old way. At a scant 5-9/164, Thompson amassed 1054 yards in 2025 on a diet of straight up, old school boundary-only deep threat usage, against SEC caliber competition. That's pretty wild.
NFL corners will wipe him out on a lot of reps, but Thompson's best-in-class 4.26 jets sizzle. Asked for by name by new chief offensive officer Mike McDaniel, Thompson heads into one of the most crowded offenses in the entire league. He has no clear path to playing time, and that might not change. But as a quintessential 'if he's even, he's leavin' guy for an offensive coordinator coping with Tyreek Hill withdrawal, Thompson is an easy guy to talk yourself into taking a stab on. He might just be the closest thing we've seen to DeSean Jackson since.
Skyler Bell
WR, Buffalo
He's older and only put up the big-time numbers the one season, but to say Skyler Bell ate for the 'other' Huskies last year would be an understatement: His 101-1,278-13 line made him a 2025 All-American. After three lost seasons in a deeply stunted Wisconsin offense, Bell's big two years in Connecticut may have been more about him escaping from a bad situation than exploiting his relative age advantage (although he did definitely also do that). Posting 4.4 speed and 95th percentile jumps at 6-0/192, his combine testing comped to such big names as Santonio Holmes and Rashee Rice.
As you might expect for a guy that caught 100 balls, the tape shows a guy who was used every way imaginable: Deep crossers, screens, back to the quarterback, facing the quarterback, jump balls down the field, catch and run slants, the works. It's a deeply imperfect comparison (one was 20 years old, the other was 23), but Harold Fannin had prolific numbers at Bowling Green that were discounted by many. Bell put up bigger numbers than any of the first-round receivers, and he's heading into an offense with an elite quarterback and a very murky receiving corp. Lot to like here.
And he's from the Bronx, that's gotta count for something.
Caleb Douglas
WR, Miami
Certainly nobody had Douglas being the first receiver drafted in the Sullivan-Hafley era, but that's what happened. At 6-3/206 with 4.39 speed, Douglas' long strides gobble up the turf in a hurry, enabling a fairly productive two seasons with Texas Tech.
Douglas' collegiate career didn't help him distinguish himself, but Miami taking a shine to him might have. The only competition Douglas has for serious targets (that is, however serious Malik Willis targets prove capable of being) in Week 1 are guys like Malik Washington (good player, but very small and a regime holdover), Jalen Tolbert (pushed offscreen by Ryan Flournoy), Tutu Atwell (too small and injury prone for more than reserve role), and Kevin Coleman, who was drafted later than him. A big body for a team that may challenge Detroit's kneecap-biting crown, Douglas might just be the guy who logs the most snaps here. His testing profile comps out dangerously close to Marquez Valdes-Scantling; here's hoping Douglas has more than that one trick in his bag.
Malachi Fields
WR, N.Y. Giants
Rough combine showing for Malachi Fields, as the Golden Domer was hoping to follow up a strong Senior Bowl showing with better testing than his 4.61 40. An especially sluggish 1.63 10-yard split shows a player that can move it enough once he's rolling, and at 6-4.5/218 he is instant size on the perimeter. His best NFL attribute may be his run blocking. That's certainly what got John Harbaugh to sign off on him.
But look at the forest for the trees for a moment, and it maybe softens the lens just a bit. The Giants are beat up at receiver: Wan'Dale Robinson hitched a ride south with Brian Daboll, Malik Nabers is still working his way back from last September's ACL injury, and mainstay Darius Slayton won't be recovered from core muscle surgery for a while yet. Against this backdrop, the Giants taking a 'finished product' player like Fields with a lower ceiling but that can play right away starts to look less like a dart throw and a bit more calculated.
If there's a passing offense that can get a guy like Fields involved to a degree that we care about, it's probably a run-first one that occasionally bootlegs Dart off of play action into a one-on-one ball to a big. Fields is that big.
—Luke Wilson
