NICO BACK!!!

He’s a good run blocker. I wonder if his future is as a flex TE mismatch type. He wouldn’t need to add much weight to do it, and if he can without getting slower, he’d be deadly in the run zone. 

Not saying Nico doesn’t have the necessary speed or route running, but you don’t have to look far to see how that profile would play out in the NFL. N’Keal Harry looks like a good example of what happens when you’re big and slow

Aside from D. Bush, I think 2020 Nico could be the best football player we've seen wearing Maize and Blue in a while.

His numbers might not be astronomical, so he probably won't get much AA buzz, but he is going to terrify opposing coordinators.

The data suggests he might be an anomaly that scouts won't be able to figure out.  The data might be wrong, because college =/= NFL.  But what the data says is his jump ball skills are off the charts.  He's not merely a jump ball type receiver.  He is, potentially, the pinnacle of that kind of player.  He draws panic DPIs at double the rate of the best receivers in the country, and leads receivers in contested catch rate by an absurd margin.

If that doesn't translate to the NFL then he won't have much of a career, and maybe this is how folks convinced him to return.  But if it does, we're not looking at a conventional football player for which an NFL-equivalent of YMRFSPA applies.  We're looking at a bona fide NFL playmaker.  That Michigan didn't throw to.

I mean, I don't know.  We're forced to extrapolate.  The NFL is a world of its own where all kinds of Heisman winners washed out because their college-breaking skills didn't translate.  But again, I don't think I've seen numbers like this, ever.  Other college receivers with his size aren't getting per-target numbers anywhere close to his, that are only pedestrian in aggregate because of Shea Patterson.  It all comes down to whether or not this data means anything. He'll either hang around practice squads for a few years and fade away, or there's a slim chance he could be destined for the HoF and the biggest steal of next year's draft if he's anything other than the #1 pick.  Strangely, I think the least likely scenario is that he's average, because NFL corners will either shut him down or they won't.

He needs to go into a situation like Allen Lazard went into where he can do the effort things like block and play special teams. Then, he will eventually get a chance to catch some balls and prove his worth there.