Can Johnson overcome size concerns to be successful in the NFL?
Oregon wide receiver Tez Johnson has spent most of his football career being overlooked.
He’s always been undersized in a sport ruled by men on the extreme side of the bell curve of human size and athletic ability. And yet, Johnson has consistently produced at two different schools (Troy and Oregon) while also defying injury concerns by playing a heavy snap load across his 62 collegiate games.
The New York Giants could use every offensive weapon they can get as they rebuild. So should they look draft Johnson?
I don’t normally editorialize in these posts, but I’m going to say “no”, I don’t want the Giants to draft Johnson. Not because he’s a bad player — quite the opposite — but that I believe there’s only one team that should draft Johnson: The Denver Broncos.
Johnson and Bo Nix consider each other to be brothers, and that Johnson is a part of the Nix family. The two share a unique bond and frankly there are some things that are bigger than football.
Prospect: Tez Johnson (15)
Games Watched: vs. Washington (2023), vs. Ohio State (2024), vs. Purdue (2024), vs. Illinois (2024)
Red Flags: none
Measurables
Height: 5-foot 9⅛ inches
Weight: 159 pounds
Arm length: 29⅞ inches
Hand size: 8½ inches
Strengths
Best traits
- Quickness
- Agility
- Route running
- Ball skills
- Competitive toughness
- Run after catch
Johnson is a frenetic receiving prospect with great quickness and agility, as well as remarkable competitive toughness.
He was used in a number of alignments in the Oregon offense and was a threat at all three levels of the field. He’s a precise route runner who uses his quick feet and explosive acceleration to create separation out of his breaks, as well as manipulate his routes to set up defensive backs to be wrong. Johnson is able to change speeds easily and carry speed through razor-sharp breaks.
His athleticism makes him a consistent threat with the ball in his hands. He combines his quickness, agility, and explosiveness with great vision and creativity as a runner. He’s able to make defenders miss in a phone booth and his size allows him to exploit quickly closing running lanes.
Johnson has good ball skills, locating, tracking, and adjusting to the ball at all levels of the field. He’s also a natural “hands” catcher who can extend to maximize his catch radius and pluck errant passes out of the air well away from his frame.
Johnson is also highly competitive in all aspects of his game. He never backs down from larger defenders (which is all of them), and gets after them as a blocker. He’s willing to take on contact and fights for yardage as a ball carrier. Johnson runs his routes at full speed when he knows the ball isn’t coming to him, which makes him an effective misdirection piece as a part of larger route concepts.
Weaknesses
Worst traits
- Size
Johnson’s single largest weakness, and the root cause of the issues in his game is his extreme lack of size – at least for the NFL.
In reality, Johnson is average height for an American man and almost right in the middle of the average size for a healthy man (generally considered to be between 144 and 176 pounds at 5-foot-9). However, the NFL is a land of giants and Tez Johnson is Liliputian by comparison. He would be rivaling Tank Dell or Tutu Atwell for smallest player in the league. To put that in context, he would be giving up roughly 20 to 30 pounds to an “undersized” cornerback.
That has a trickle down effect on the rest of his game; from his release, to playing through contact, to contested catches, to blocking. And while he’s certainly capable of being an effective weapon, it comes with some necessary schematic adjustments that most teams would be unwilling to make. Oregon often hid him in the backfield, the slot, or bunch formations, or gave him flying releases off of jet motion. He’s dangerous after the catch, but needs to be schemed touches in space.
Game Tape
(Tez Johnson is the Oregon receiver wearing No. 15 with a sleeve on his left calf.)
Projection
Johnson will likely find a home as a slot receiver and “offensive weapon” at the NFL level.
There’s a ton to like about his game – except for his size. He might well be in the conversation for first receiver off the board if he was 6-foot-1, 210 pounds. But unfortunately, that wasn’t the hand he was dealt. Instead, he’ll have a relatively limited appeal around the NFL and some teams may have him off their boards completely.
That said, the strengths of his game will be difficult for a defense to cope with if an offense is willing to pick its spots and scheme around his limitations. Johnson’s route running, ball skills, and explosive athleticism will let him exploit any mistakes by the opposing defense. But he’ll need to land in the right situation to put those skills to use.
Does he fit the Giants?
No (see above)
Final Word: A Day 2 value for the correct scheme
