Chargers Draft Quentin Johnston: Dynasty Rookie Outlook (2023 Fantasy Football)

The 2023 NFL Draft is here! After months of waiting, we finally know where the 2023 NFL Draft class will land. This information shapes the outlook for rookies in 2023 and beyond. We’re going to have you covered throughout and following the 2023 NFL Draft to help you prepare for your fantasy football leagues. Next up for many will be dynasty rookie drafts. To help you prepare to make your dynasty rookie draft picks, let’s dive into Thor Nystrom’s 2023 NFL Draft profile as well as Pat Fitzmaurice’s dynasty rookie draft outlook for Quentin Johnston.

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Dynasty Rookie Picks & Predictions: Chargers Draft Quentin Johnston

Let’s first see what NFL Draft expert Thor Nystrom says about Quentin Johnston.

Thor Nystrom’s 2023 NFL Draft Outlook & Player Comp

Player comparison: A.J. Green

Bio
If you’re wondering, “How the heck did Quentin Johnston wind up at TCU?” — you aren’t alone. He did not fall through the cracks. He was not one of those ubiquitous diamonds in the rough that former HC Gary Patterson found and polished.

No, Quentin Johnston was a consensus four-star recruit. A top-75 overall national prospect. He held offers from Texas, Oklahoma, Notre Dame, Nebraska, Baylor, and Virginia Tech. Johnston originally committed to the Longhorns before flipping to TCU late in the process.

Johnston grew up in Temple, Texas, about an hour north of Austin. Texas had a direct pipeline into Temple. DT Ta’Quon Graham was the most recent Temple star who had followed that pipeline to Austin — and then the NFL. Johnston defied the advice of his high school coach to spurn the Horns.

Johnston’s official visit to TCU changed everything. Johnston appreciated the close-knit, hometown feel of TCU’s campus. And Johnston valued Patterson’s sustained success in Fort Worth — there was something to that. Johnston wanted stability. Further, he wanted to be a catalyst for something bigger. Spurring the Horned Frog program to heights they had never achieved before.

Many prospects say these things. When they do, media transcribe the quotes, and print them without thought. Filler quotes. But Quentin Johnston saw something during that campus visit. He had a vision. A belief had formed. He did not care if people felt he was making a mistake.

So he flipped his commitment from Texas to TCU in December 2019. In so doing, he became the second-highest high school recruit to ever sign with Patterson during Patterson’s 20-year reign in Fort Worth. Johnston was the sort of physical specimen that Patterson rarely got access to at TCU.

Johnston was huge for a high school receiver. He had legitimate football skills, he was a track star, and he also excelled on the basketball court. Johnston’s signing was celebrated at TCU. He was the big man on campus. And he didn’t disappoint, starting hot. Johnston broke the Big 12’s true frosh record with 22.1 YPC, as the Frogs finished 6-4 during that COVID-shortened year.

But the next season, disaster struck. The defense fell apart, and the passing offense went into the tank as Max Duggan’s accuracy did in kind. TCU spiraled to 5-7. Patterson, a legend at the school, was forced out in an ugly public battle with the administration. There were private moments that season when even Quentin Johnston, a person with supreme belief in both his skill set and the way he sees things, wondered if he had made a mistake back in December 2019, when everything had seemed so clear to him.

TCU looked across town for Patterson’s successor, tabbing SMU HC Sonny Dykes, an Air Raid guru. Dykes promised to tick up TCU’s passing offense by working with TCU’s quarterbacks. Everyone already knew TCU had sleeping-giant potential in the receiver room.

You know what happened next. TCU was the surprise of the 2022 season. The HypnoToads went 13-2, reaching the national title game. In the College Football Playoff Semifinal win over Michigan, Johnston went off for a 6-163-1 line that won him Offensive Most Valuable Player honors. The Wolverines could not cover him.

TCU was mauled by Georgia in the national title game, as the Bulldogs entered the game with a clear mission of taking Johnston away. With RB Kendre Miller hobbled, TCU didn’t have the firepower to deal with Georgia’s defensive dominance.

No matter — Johnston’s vision had coalesced in a way nobody else could have seen coming. In three seasons on campus, he broke records, helped elevate a non-power program to the national championship, earned First-Team All-Big 12 honors twice, and was a Biletnikoff Semifinalist.

With all the goals he had set out to accomplish checked off, Johnston declared early for the NFL Draft in the days that followed the title game. He is in the running to be the first wide receiver off the board.

Strengths
Freaky physical specimen. At a shade under 6-foot-3/208, Johnston posted a 97th-percentile vertical and a 99th-percentile broad jump at the NFL Combine. Johnston deferred his other tests until TCU’s March 30 pro day event. The former high school track star is expected to shine in the 40-yard dash.

Johnston was ranked No. 23 on Bruce Feldman’s 2022 “Freaks” list. Feldman reported in that piece — published last August — that Johnston runs a confirmed 4.4 forty and back-squats 575 pounds. This is roughly the expectation for his time on March 30.

PrizePicks set Johnston’s forty time at 4.38 when it dropped NFL Combine props last month. By close, the market had bet that up to 4.44, but some of that fade action could have been speculative following early rumors that Johnston wouldn’t run (my colleague, Matthew Freedman, was the first to report that Johnston, in fact, would not run at the NFL Combine).

Johnston is a natural deep threat. It’s hard to account for Johnston’s suddenness off the snap. He’s a muscled-up long-strider who chews up serious grass when he gets going.

Deep safeties can’t cheat off their responsibility against Johnston. They can’t recover in time. It’s a mistake they don’t make twice.

There are very few humans who run a 4.4 and get up in the air with a 6-foot-3 guy with a 40.5-inch vertical and an 81.5-inch wingspan. Kobe Bryant had a 38-inch vertical. Quentin Johnston’s wingspan is 6-foot-8. Johnston had the fifth-longest arms of the 50 receivers at the Combine.

Johnston knows how to use his frame, he doesn’t get jarred by contact, and, when he gets up in the air, nobody can get higher than him. Johnston is a proven winner in jump-ball situations. In every single one of Johnston’s seasons on campus, he reeled in at least seven contested targets.

Johnston can also eat in the intermediate area, in part because corners simply must respect Johnston’s ability to pop the top. Johnston is the flame-thrower who can hit 100+ mph. If you’re not choked up, in the back of the batter’s box, you might not make contact. So corners sit back on their heels, anticipating the heater — and can then find themselves at a severe disadvantage when Johnston instead explodes inside off the snap for a slant.

In the NFL, working, for the first time, with a quick-processing quarterback with plus accuracy, Johnston’s production is sure to uptick from what we saw at TCU. Johnston will also benefit from playing with an improved supporting cast.

As we saw in the title game against Georgia, talented defenses with deep secondaries could take away Johnston by double-teaming and over-the-top bracketing him all game without fear of retribution from TCU’s ancillary skill players. Don’t you dare hold that against Quentin Johnston’s eval.

In the Vikings’ 2022 opener against the Packers, Justin Jefferson posted a 9-184-2 line on 11 targets against single coverage. Jefferson was double-teamed and over-the-top bracketed the rest of the season. Jefferson averaged 7.3 catches for 98.2 yards and 0.35 TDs per game the rest of the way. Same player. Same scheme. Context matters — and it absolutely affects production.

At the NFL level, if Quentin Johnston is playing alongside receivers who can consistently beat single coverage, as he can, it will not be possible to bracket him as defenses could in college.

Johnston adds gadget utility on end-arounds. He’s a fearless runner with arm-tackle-breaking muscle and one-cut shake. Between this area and quick-outs, you can steal a small handful of yards every game. If I’m right about the long-ball utility translating — which will force a percentage of off-coverage looks — you simply get the defense to tip its man-look hand through pre-snap motion and take its lunch money at least once a half.

Johnston is a true outside receiver. A true outside receiver who will legitimately scare NFL defenses deep and take profits over the middle of the field while gobbling up yards after the catch (YAC). Johnston ranked No. 11 in missed tackles forced and No. 6 in YAC per reception last year. This area of his game will also tick up when the accuracy and placement of the quarterback he’s working with do in kind.

Johnston has some justifiable nitpicks in his profile that we’ll delve into below — they’re fair, they need to be discussed, and they elevate his risk profile. I rank him WR1 anyway because I don’t think Johnston has gotten the benefit of the doubt for the circumstances he was in often enough. TCU QB Max Duggan left a metric ton of unrealized Johnston yards on the field the past few seasons.

Weaknesses
As stated above, Johnston didn’t run the 40 or do the agility drills at the NFL Combine. Nobody questions his speed. It’ll be interesting to see if Johnston ultimately does the agility drills at TCU’s March 30 pro day. And, if he does, what sorts of marks he gets.

Johnston’s north-south explosion and speed speak for themselves on the field. Johnston can make defenders miss — sometimes wildly. But he’s a no-nonsense type — when he evades, it’s via one cut, and he’s right back to hurtling upfield. He’s a high-cut long-strider, not a low-to-the-ground jitterbug.

I mentioned routes where Johnston wins above — his “fastballs”. TCU didn’t ask him to throw many more pitches than that, as it were. Johnston won’t be asked to run a full complement of routes in the NFL, either, and he’s never going to be excellent at sudden-breaking ones. But he remains unpolished in this area in general, having leaned on athleticism more than acumen to this point.

Johnston has a very frustrating habit that may or may not be able to be coached out of him. Above, in the strengths section, I spoke about “Good QJ” downfield. The times when he’s locked in. The times when he seemed impossible to defend downfield. When he got up in the air, extended his arms, high-pointed the ball, and came down with it. Beautiful stuff.

There’s another side. Too often, Johnston lets the ball descend too far into his frame. Not every time. That’s not it. He’s unique in this regard. He catches the ball as if there is no plan. There are times when he lets it get all the way into his body and he secures it underhanded. Other times, similar, but, overhanded.

But you can’t call him a “body-catcher”. There are simply too many instances of Johnston spearing the ball outside his frame. Or catching a bucket throw over his shoulder while running upfield. Or taking to the sky fully extended.

Oddly, it’s in these moments, in the air, free of thoughts, when he doesn’t have any issue fully extending and spearing clean. I noticed the bad habit cropped up more often when he had his feet set on the ground at the catch point.

My working theory? He’s thinking about his run after the catch. This theory also helps explain Johnston’s elevated level of “concentration drops”. Is it possible he was prioritizing his concentration on his run-after-the-catch plan over his technique at the catch point?

Johnston dropped eight balls last year for an 11.8% drop rate. We’d like to see his 10.2% career drop rate trend down into the single digits. It’s an all-time understatement to say that Quentin Johnston put himself into stickier situations than he needed to with his nonchalance at the catch point at TCU, giving defenders second chances to make a play on the ball, or rake it out of his arms at the last second.

Whether Johnston becomes an NFL star hinges on whether his NFL coaches can get him to attack the ball at the catch point consistently, and polish him off at the edges. He’s the only receiver in this class with a superstar skill set. I must rank him WR1. QJ isn’t a sure thing. But even his floor is a field-stretching NFL starter. His downfield trick is that neat.

2023 Dynasty Rookie Draft Outlook: Quentin Johnston

With Johnston landing on the Chargers, he’ll be paired with Justin Herbert, one of the best young quarterbacks in the game. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Johnston goes to a team that already has Keenan Allen and Mike Williams. Allen is getting older, and Williams might not be with the Chargers for more than another year, but those two veterans will impede Johnston’s path to fantasy value in 2023.

There’s still a lot to like about Johnston. In a WR class loaded with Smurfs, Johnston is a 6-3, 208-pound X-receiver with a big catch radius and extraordinary leaping ability. Poor catching technique led to issues with drops at TCU, but Johnston has the sort of size and speed that dynasty managers covet in wide receivers.

Johnston is likely to be a mid-first-round pick in 1QB dynasty rookie drafts. In superflex dynasty leagues, he’ll likely go in the 1.08-1.11 range. If he can fix his problems with drops, Johnston has the potential to be a star. Just don’t expect a lot of year 1 production with Allen and Williams ahead of him in the pecking order for targets.