With five quarterbacks already off the board, CBS Sports has the Washington Football Team selecting Florida receiver Kadarius Toney with the 19th overall pick in one of its latest mock drafts.
"Five quarterbacks are off the board, as are the three top offensive linemen, so instead, the Football Team gets a playmaker in Toney, who was special during the '20 season for the Gators," Ryan Wilson writes for CBS Sports. "In Washington he'll join Terry McLaurin and Antonio Gibson, two young stars in the making."
Washington needs help at multiple offensive positions worthy of a first-round pick, including quarterback, offensive line and wide receiver, so Toney is worth strong consideration at 19. As such, let's explore the 22-year-old Gators receiver.
Toney is listed at six feet, 193 pounds and made a huge leap in his senior season, jumping from 253 total yards from scrimmage with one touchdown in 2019 to 1,145 total yards and 11 touchdowns in 2020. That's a sizable improvement and worth exploring in its own right.
For some background on Toney, 106.7 The Fan's 'BMitch & Finlay' enlisted the help of Edgar Thompson, Gators beat writer for the Orlando Sentinel, who calls Toney the "most explosive perimeter playmaker" for Florida since Percy Harvin.
"You talk about a guy who evolved," Thompson said Thursday. "This is a high school quarterback, came in, wanted to play quarterback. And he still throws the football like 80, 85 yards — they say he's got the strongest arm on the team by a mile. He is a runner. He's got incredible wiggle and bend, and just, he makes guys miss time and again and he can accelerate at a cut very effectively."
"But the thing that he did, because he was kind of one of these get-it-to guys as they like to call them, that you just get the ball to them in the offense in any way you can and he'd just make it happen. Well he developed into a really good route-runner and receiver this past offseason," he said.
For someone who recorded only three touchdowns in his first three college seasons, Toney's offensive explosion in 2020 truly "came out of nowhere," Thompson says.
"He was unbelievable this year," he said. "He caught everything in his radius. It was like, what happened? I mean the kid dropped passes. They couldn't trust him as a punt returner, which he seemed ideally suited for, and this year he was snagging the football. I mean he'd be in the seam and that ball would be coming high — you know how that play is — and he would just reach those two hands up in stride and just snag it out of the air."
"I don't think he dropped a ball," Thompson added. "So he has gone from being a guy who might have been a fourth-, fifth-round guy — just because you feel like you can maybe turn him into something — into being a potential first-round pick. I mean, he's really a talent."
Thompson contrasted Toney against another Florida receiver, Jacob Copeland, who he says has "all the tools," including a 405-pound bench press, but hasn't lived up to the potential of his high school All-American billing in Gainesville.
""He drops passes right and left. He just hasn't been the player people thought he was going to be," Thompson said of Copeland. "Well, he got a template last year, a blueprint, from Kadarius Toney's development and hopefully he follows it. Because Kadarius Toney, don't know how it happened, whether he just worked on the JUGS machine all day or what. We asked him [and] he tried to downplay it. And it was like, you did something, didn't you? I don't know, maybe it was a mental focus. Maybe he just was not honed in."
"I don't know what it is, but he's a special athlete," he continued. "We knew that from the first time we saw him touch the football back as a freshman, like I said with his wiggle, his touch. He's a total ankle breaker. He's the most explosive perimeter playmaker the Florida Gators have had since Percy Harvin. And I know Percy Harvin's NFL career did not turn out like anyone expected it, especially myself, but he's the best college football player I've ever seen."
For some historical context, Harvin amassed 3,781 yards from scrimmage with 32 total touchdowns, and won two national championships (2006, 2008) in three seasons at Florida. After going 22nd overall to the Vikings in 2009, Harvin suffered a wild string of setbacks in the NFL which can best be described as mental lapses, and his NFL career proved short-lived.
"Even as a freshman. I mean the first time you saw him touch the football in a game, it was like whoa," Thompson said of Harvin's college career. "I mean I turned to the guy next to me, we just looked at each other. The acceleration he had. Kadarius doesn't have quite that, but he has more wiggle. I mean he can make like four and five guys miss on a play. It's unbelievable."
"He played within the offense last year and that's what he's got to do going forward," he said, "is take this season and build on this, and not go back to the old Kadarius Toney, which is just a guy who just wants to freelance and do his thing. Because we've seen a lot of talented guys who like to freelance get to the NFL and they're non-factors."
The Gators haven't had an offensive skill position player selected in the first round since Tim Tebow in 2010. Between Toney and tight end Kyle Pitts, they could have two go on the first night of the draft in 2020. If Toney's still on the board at 19, Washington would be wise to take him, finally giving Terry McLaurin the explosive running mate he deserves.
