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We aren’t legally allowed to begin the NFL/college football offseason until we can take to Twitter and talk about our favorite players not receiving enough votes to an all-star game or invitations to an event.
I don’t make up the rules, I just enforce them.
Offseason football season was in full force earlier this week as the NFL Scouting Combine announced its full list of players to receive invitations to the event. People flocked to their laptops and phones to voice their praise for their favorite players who made the combine, and their displeasure for those who didn’t.
Those who issue invitations to the combine were smart enough to send one to Air Force defensive lineman Jordan Jackson, but there was still plenty they got wrong.
For a deeper look at some of the players snubbed from this year’s combine, I took to the Internet to see just how badly the combine missed on a few players.
Aqeel Glass, Alabama A&M QB
It isn’t likely, but there is a very real possibility that team’s who take a quarterback in the first round of the 2022 NFL Draft could find themselves back in the market for another QB a few years later. It’s not exactly a secret that this year’s class just isn’t as highly-touted as previous classes.
That makes the combine’s decision to omit Alabama A&M’s Aqeel Glass from the combine all the more curious.
Glass is one of the higher-touted FCS quarterbacks entering this year’s draft after he threw for 3,603 yards, 36 touchdowns and seven interceptions in his final season, and leaves the program with 12,136 passing yards and 109 touchdown passes, both of which are Alabama A&M records.
At the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl, Glass was the top quarterback for the American Team, as he completed 9-of-11 passes for 141 yards and one touchdown in the 25-24 defeat to the National Team.
Only two non-FBS quarterbacks drew invites from the combine this year, Cole Kelley of Southeastern Louisiana and E.J. Perry of Brown. Glass will now have to wait until Alabama A&M’s pro day to show scouts what he’s capable of.
T.J. Pledger, Utah RB
Utah running back T.J. Pledger transferred to Utah at ahead of the 2021 season after spending his first three seasons at Oklahoma. Likely in search of a lead role with the Utes, that never quite materialized for Pledger as he posted a rushing line of 104-694-6 behind Utah’s star running back Tavion Thomas (204-1108-21).
It’s not all bad news for Pledger, who still posted career-highs at Utah in 2021, but the four-star recruit from the 2018 class who was once rated as the no. 4 all-purpose back of his class per 247Sports’ composite rankings didn’t do enough to earn a combine invite.
At 5-foot-9, 196-pounds, Pledger comes in a bit undersized for a running back. He also hasn’t offered much in the passing game, having logged just 21 career receptions for 196 yards. He does however do a nice job at evading tackles, as per PFF.com’s missed tackles forced metric, he forced 52 missed tackles on rushing attempts over the last two seasons, forcing a missed tackle on 26.1% of his carries over that span.
Pledger is the 157th ranked player in the 2022 class per PFF’s 2022 NFL Draft Big Board.
Master Teague, RB Ohio State
In his four seasons at Ohio State, Master Teague spent the majority of his career scrounging for table scraps left for him by J.K. Dobbins, Mike Weber, Trey Sermon and TreVeyon Henderson. An Achilles injury suffered in 2020, along with an injury that forced him to miss six games in 2021 has put a damper on his stock heading into the draft.
Always the bridesmaid, never the bride, Teague’s best rushing season came in 2019 when he rushed for 135-789-4, and followed it up in 2020 with another 514 yards and eight touchdowns on 104 carries in 2020. His 2021 season was his worst since his freshman year, as he ceded the starting role to Henderson, while rushing just 66 times for 348 yards and four touchdowns.
In regards to the Achilles injury Teague suffered in March of 2020, he did return to the Buckeyes in Week 8 against Nebraska, and went on to start six of the team’s final seven games that season.
Teague didn’t play in the Senior Bowl or the Shrine Bowl, but for a back from Ohio State who averaged 5.5 yards per carry for his career and performed well when called upon, it’s surprising to see him get snubbed from the NFL Combine altogether.
Cam’Ron Harris, RB Miami
This should be prefaced with saying that Cam’Ron Harris was ruled out for the season following Miami’s Week 7 game against North Carolina with what was disclosed as a knee injury and nothing more. Susan Miller Degnan, a Miami Hurricanes beat writer for the Miami Herald tweeted shortly after that then head coach Manny Diaz said that Harris would be undergoing surgery after the swelling went down.
With the limited information college coaches give on player injuries, we can’t do more than speculate at this time what the severity of Harris’ injury is/was.
Despite the lingering questions surrounding his health and the fact that he wasn’t invited to the combine, Harris still deserves a mention as a back who is likely to be flying under the radar throughout this draft process.
The four-year stud out of Miami brings good size to the running back position, and showed a propensity to break-off big plays throughout his collegiate career.
Per PFF.com’s breakaway run rate (runs of 15+ yards), Harris posted a bevy of yards via the breakaway run - 51% of his rushing yards came on breakaway runs to be exact.
Viewed by many as two of the top running backs of this year’s class, both Iowa State’s Breece Hall and Michigan State’s Kenneth Walker saw 46.3% of their career rushing yards come via breakaway runs. Highly-touted Notre Dame running back Kyren Williams saw just 34.7% of his career rushing yards come on breakaway runs.
There’s a good possibility that Harris was less of a combine snub and more of a player who is not yet ready to participate in March’s combine. With that being said, he’s a name to watch in the coming months of the draft process, as he’s a player with proven explosiveness who can make plays both on the ground and through the air. For his career, he finished with a rushing line of 338-1803-22, and also caught 48 passes for 393 yards and another four scores.
Jerreth Sterns, WR Western Kentucky
I never thought I would live in a world where the receiving yards leader from the previous college season would casually be left out of the NFL Combine. But that’s exactly what happened to Western Kentucky wide receiver Jerreth Sterns, who posted a receiving line of 148-1891-17 on 185 targets in what was a pass-happy Hilltoppers offense.
Sterns’ 1,891 yards was tops in the nation over Utah State’s Devin Thompkins (1,722), while his 17 receiving touchdowns were tied for the most in the nation with Pittsburgh’s Jordan Addison.
At 5-foot-9, 195-pounds, Sterns is a compact wide receiver who is expected to run a decent 40-yard dash and play as a slot wide receiver in the NFL. In 2021 with the Hilltoppers, Sterns played 92.9 % of his snaps from the slot.
Sterns also displayed some of the most reliable hands in the nation last season. He earned the highest drop grade per PFF.com of 94.4, dropping only three passes of the 185 targets thrown his way. Sterns also earned an invite to the Shrine Bowl, where he received plenty of praise through media outlets, including PFF.com’s Trevor Sikkema.
.@WKUFootball WR Jerreth Sterns has looked great all week at @ShrineBowl. Constantly keeping defenders guessing with his routes both in 1-on-1s and full team work pic.twitter.com/fdJnHRqkZB
— Trevor Sikkema (@TampaBayTre) January 31, 2022
A congressional committee should probably be hired to look into Sterns’ absence from the combine, as it’s one of the most egregious college football crimes of our lifetime.
Jaivon Heiligh, WR Coastal Carolina
Coastal Carolina wide receiver Jaivon Heiligh is coming off a season in which he went for 66-1128-7 on 100 targets, and nearly missed back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons to close out his career if not for the 998 yards he had in 2020.
Heiligh played on an explosive Coastal Carolina offense that featured one of the nation’s top tight ends in 2021 in Isaiah Likely (59-912-12) who did earn a combine invite.
This past season, Heiligh, much like Sterns, shined in an offense that ranked first in passing down success rate (45.2%), passing marginal efficiency (15.4%) and 21st in marginal explosiveness (0.35). Quarterback Grayson McCall (2867-27-3) would have undoubtedly earned a combine invite had he not opted to return for his senior season, but Heiligh, despite a strong 2020 and 2021 is on the outside looking in at the combine.
Last season for the Chanticleers, Heilight posted six games of 100+ receiving yards, and averaged 17.1 yards per reception which tied for eighth-most among wide receivers (min. 92 targets). Heiligh looks like even more of a combine snub when you consider that he ranks 129th on PFF.com’s 2022 NFL Draft Big Board. He was also tops in the nation in yards per route run (3.42) ranking narrowly behind top-talents like Ohio State’s Jaxon Smith-Njigba and USC’s Drake London, who is viewed as one of the top receivers in this year’s class.
Jaquarii Roberson, WR Wake Forest
In a draft that is so deep at the wide receiver position, it’s not surprising that some good receivers were left out of the combine, but it’s still amazing at how badly the combine missed on some of its invites.
Wake Forest’s Jaquarri Roberson enjoyed a solid season at Wake Forest in 2021 as he went for 71-1078-8 on 112 targets in an offense that made headlines for it’s elite aerial assault last season.
If you think Roberson’s receiving line for last season is impressive, consider then that he did it as his team’s no. 2 wide receiver.
Playing opposite of Roberson was 6-foot-5, 206-pound wide receiver A.T. Perry, who led the Demon Deacons in 2021 with 71-1296-15 on a team-high 125 targets, but that didn’t stop Roberson from having a productive season after going for 62-926-8 in 2020.
Roberson lined up in the slot on 79.6% of his collegiate snaps for his career, but also managed to be a threat down field, seeing 30 targets of 20+ yards to Perry’s 33 in 2021. Roberson caught 16-of-30 passes of 20+ yards last season and turned them into 554 yards and six touchdowns. His 13.4 average depth of target was a career-high.
He displayed strong hands last season when he dropped just three of 112 targets on the year, and could be a serviceable wide receiver at the NFL level for a team looking to fill a slot role that is becoming all the more coveted around the league.
Derrick Deese, TE San Jose State
San Jose State tight end Derrick Deese has already been dubbed the Rodney Dangerfield “no respect” tight end of this year’s draft class by one Thor Nystrom on Twitter.
While I’m not one to point to the musings of random “draft experts” on Twitter too often, this Nystrom guy seems sharp enough to tout here.
Top-5 TE snubs: Derrick Deese Jr., Gerrit Prince, Armani Rogers, Lucas Krull, Trae Barry
— Thor Nystrom (@thorku) February 9, 2022
Deese is my nomination for the Rodney Dangerfield “no respect” TE prospect
Legitimate seam stretcher with NFL blood lines
NFL concerned about his size, but tbf he was a good blocker in MWC
So I looked into Deese’s situation a bit more.
It turns out, Deese not getting invited to the NFL Combine may in fact be a tremendous slight on the combine’s end.
Last season for the Spartans, Deese caught 47 passes for 720 yards and four touchdowns, while averaging 15.3 yards per reception. Cranking off big plays isn’t something new to Deese either. Over his career at San Jose State, he averaged 13.2 yards per reception and in 2021 he caught 9-of-19 targets that traveled 20+ yards down field, turning them into 216 yards and two scores.
Among the nation’s top receiving tight ends in 2021, Deese ranked seventh overall in receiving yards and 14th in yards per reception (min. 24 targets).
It’s rather mind-blowing that of the 21 tight ends invited to the combine, Deese somehow was snubbed despite having a more productive career than several of the tight ends who did receive invites.
Deese’s father, Derrick Deese Sr. was an NFL offensive lineman for 11 seasons, spending most of his time at left tackle for the San Francisco 49ers before spending his final year with the Buccaneers.
To perhaps add salt to the wound, Deese is the 130th ranked player on PFF.com’s 2022 NFL Draft Big Board and was on the Reese’s Senior Bowl watch list but ultimately failed to receive an invite. Deese has been knocked for his size at 6-foot-4, 235-pounds, but for a player who amassed over 1,100 receiving yards in college, for him to be completely left out of the combine feels unwarranted.
