2024 NFL Draft Scouting Reports: Braelon Allen, Marvin Harrison Jr., Malik Nabers

This is what we’ve been waiting for, fantasy football enthusiasts. The NFL Draft is under way, and we finally get to see where the rookie prospects are going to launch their professional careers. And NFL Draft landing spots allow us to start to zero in on fantasy football and dynasty rookie draft pick values.

As the players are selected, let’s dive into what our NFL Draft expert, Thor Nystrom, has to say for each pick made. Here you can find all of Thor’s 2024 NFL Draft Rankings and player comparisons. Below we’ll dive into a few notable names expected to be selected this week.

Fantasy Football Rookie Draft Outlook

Thor’s NFL Draft Profile & Player Comp

9. Braelon Allen (Wisconsin)

6012/235 | RAS: N/A
Player Comparison: Rashad Jennings

Braelon Allen is a big back who may have missed his era. Played in two vastly different schemes in college — first, Wisconsin’s classic I-formation power-run scheme and then Phil Longo’s spread offense out of the shotgun. Appreciate his light feet for his size — he’s not a plodder. But he’s also, frustratingly, not a bulldozer-type who naturally leverages his size and power advantages. Too often, Allen gets cute and attempts to evade in the open field instead of taking the shortest path possible and running over smaller defenders in the open field. His upright style makes it easier in those scenarios to chop him down. My bigger issue is his vision. Allen doesn’t have a natural feel for finding space or following his blocks. Too often, he gets tunnel vision and misses a cutback lane or outright barrels into the back of a blocker. In the passing game he’s proven he can be a dump-off guy… but no more. He’ll corral the ball as the check-down guy and go down shortly thereafter. Disappointingly unreliable in pass-pro to this point. He’ll mix it up but becomes a flailing matador with a rickety base under him. It’s a little concerning he didn’t athletically test during the pre-draft process. Allen just turned 20, so more improvement may be coming.

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1. Marvin Harrison Jr. | Ohio State

6032/209 | RAS: N/A
Comp: A.J. Green

Marvin Harrison Sr. made the Hall of Fame as a sub-180-pound receiver. He had one path – and one path only – to reach Canton: Become a route-running virtuoso. So that’s what he did.

Marvin Sr. named his son Marvin Jr., whose adolescence was an education in dad’s wide-receiver-book-of-secrets knowledge. But as Marvin Jr. matured, he grew into a physical package his father could only dream about – tall, well-built, long-armed… with track speed. The prototype.

Receiving prospects that are this physically talented have a tendency to be raw at some of the game’s finer points when they enter the NFL. For the same reason dominant youth fireballers often need to learn off-speed pitches when they enter minor league baseball: They didn’t need more than a fastball to dominate youth competition.

But Marvin Jr. didn’t really have a choice in that matter, did he? Sixteen years after his father retired from the NFL, Marvin Jr. enters the pros as a rare commodity, indeed: A refined prodigy. He looks like NFL scouts collectively built him in Madden, and he plays like he’s been getting tips from a Hall of Fame personal tutor since birth.

Start with the release package. Marvin Sr. had to learn to beat bigger, longer corners off the line. Because if he couldn’t dictate the terms of the dance, he couldn’t win. Harrison Jr. is sudden and precise with his footwork, with a new look every snap, making it difficult to stay square without overcompensating. And you aren’t impeding his progress unless you have a firm base under you with hands on him.

Harrison Jr. enters his route and quickly deciphers the coverage’s intentions. This area got a lot of work the past couple of years – the conventional coverage looks that he was getting early on as a sophomore quickly morphed into opposing defensive coordinators throwing the kitchen sink at him.

As he got into his third and final season, Harrison Jr. was seeing double-teams at a rate that – watching the Buckeyes live in the fall – I couldn’t remember seeing at the Power 5 level. But that’s anecdotal. Reception Perception’s Matt Harmon quantified it: Per Harmon’s charting, Harrison Jr. broke the previous double-team-rate record, while shattering the record for success rate when doubled. Basically, this was giving a young Tiger Woods progressively higher handicaps until they became astronomical only to watch him win every competition anyway. If that’s not telling, I don’t know what is.

Puts in perspective not only Marvin Harrison Jr’s dominance, but the utter respect he demands from defenses https://t.co/X3A2fnicWo pic.twitter.com/Eugzxp1uxZ

— Thor Nystrom (@thorku) March 25, 2024

Why did opposing coordinators begin doing this? Because Harrison Jr. was in the 100th percentile in PFF receiving grade against single-man coverage over the past two seasons. Leaving one corner on Harrison Jr. in man coverage was pushing him into a shark tank wearing a steak suit.

Keep in mind: Last year, Harrison Jr. did all this working with Kyle McCord, who was banished to Syracuse via the transfer portal after the season. For all his faults, McCord knew where his bread was buttered. It was in his statistical best interest to force targets MHJ’s way, disadvantageous or not.

Last year, Harrison Jr. had the highest target share – 33.3% – in college football. That’s not the crazy part. The crazy part is Harrison Jr.’s target share spiked to 40% against man coverage. Let me reiterate for the NFL defensive coordinators in our reading audience: You do not leave a man one-on-one against Marvin Harrison Jr. in man coverage.

Harrison Jr. throttles speed at will – his most impressive attribute as a route-runner. It’s very difficult to get a bead on his intentions because of this. He’s precise and calculated into the route break, and utterly violent out of them, exposing back to top speed quickly.

Harrison Jr. is a downfield killer – top five last year in both deep catches and deep yards – whose size/speed combination, body control and leaping ability, for me, as a lifelong Minnesota Vikings fan, could at times evoke a certain Super Freak receiver from my boyhood that I cannot ever see myself comping a prospect to. But you can’t really play off him due to Harrison Jr.’s ability to consistently throw open passing windows in the intermediate range.

Harrison has a huge catch radius, and he’s reliable with anything you can get near it, posting a strong 6.1% career drop rate over heavy volume at Ohio State. Reported to be maniacal with a modified jugs machine at home during his free time, the hand work shows.

My biggest nitpick about his game is he doesn’t really break tackles. It’s important to note, however, that this does not mean that he isn’t good after the catch. Harrison Jr. seamlessly transitions from receiver to runner and has very good in-the-moment spatial awareness. He piles up comparable YAC to top prospects more skilled at evading or breaking tackles because of this.

For instance, last year, Harrison Jr. had 44% and 54%, respectively, of the receiving yards after contact that Malik Nabers and Rome Odunze did. And yet Harrison Jr. had 0.8 more YAC/R than Odunze, and only 0.2 less than Nabers. Harrison Jr. isn’t flashy in this area – only effective.

Harrison Jr. skipped the draft process. I don’t care. I’ll go further: I would have advised him to do the exact same. His film speaks for itself, as does the rest of it. Harrison Jr. burst to the top of the nation’s best WR room and posted two enormous seasons before declaring for the NFL. He’s the prototype physically and athletically, with genetics and pedigree in spades. For receiver prospects, it’s rare to see floor/ceiling combinations this high.

Check out more NFL Draft profiles and player comps from Thor in our 2024 NFL Draft Guide

2. Malik Nabers | LSU

5117/199 | RAS: 9.67
Comp: Odell Beckham Jr.

We think of defenders as the ones who attack. Nabers’ game flips that on its head. Nabers is the Nikola Tesla of receivers. He’s in complete control of inexhaustible, high-wattage electricity.

Nabers is a break-neck route-runner with legitimately freaky movement. He generates separation at will due to his ludicrous stop/start ability – he accelerates 0-to-60 in a snap and can stop on a dime – and the fact that he loses zero momentum when changing directions.

Nabers sets the table for his route-break filth by throttling tempo and movement patterns unpredictably, almost like a cat playing with a mouse. For different reasons than Harrison Jr., you cannot strand someone on an island with Nabers. In fact, last year, Nabers slightly bested Harrison Jr. in PFF receiving grade percentile against single-coverage.

Once Nabers has the ball in his hands, the defense is in a car chase with Mario Andretti. Nabers is faster than anyone you have, and he’s just as evasive. Nabers’ 30 missed tackles, 309 receiving yards after contact and 43 explosive plays all finished No. 2 last season. He was named First-team AP All-American, having put up 1,569 receiving yards and 14 TDs.

Despite Nabers’ size and obvious after-the-catch ability, LSU spoon-fed him very few freebie targets. The Tigers instead leveraged Nabers’ athleticism to attack defenses deeper down the field. Nabers is a downfield killer. He has the athleticism to free himself and the leaping acrobatic style downfield to win jump balls.

He’s even more scary in the intermediate sector. By the data, Nabers wins wide-open separation at a rate comparable to anyone in the past 10 receiving classes. Hit him on the hands and you immediately unlock that special after-the-catch electricity.

Nabers has extremely reliable hands. So reliable, in fact, that he posted the exact same stellar drop rate each of the last two seasons: 5.3%. I particularly appreciate the smoothness with which he’s able to spear off-target balls outside his frame and without wasting motion or losing momentum become a runner.

Nabers has elements of his game that are similar stylistically to three active LSU star receivers currently in the NFL: Odell Beckham Jr., Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson. My comp for him was Chase earlier in the process. But I felt Beckham was a closer encapsulation of the type of movement we are talking about. I wouldn’t argue with the use of any of that trio as his comp, however.

I only have two nitpicks with Nabers. He lacks play strength, something he can’t do anything about, and he always plays with his hands low. The latter is, many times, a strength – a delicious twist to the electric movement. It makes it extremely difficult to tell where Nabers is headed into a route break, and it also makes it more difficult to accurately gauge the speed at which he’s moving (because he doesn’t have the exaggerated arm swing of other speedsters).

However, this quirk can open up opportunities for defenders to jar him off the line in press when they’re lucky enough to get their hands on him. He has electric feet, but sometimes gets cute playing three-card monte off the line, opening up opportunities to get jarred and have his momentum stalled. A similar phenomenon can occur along the route if his man can stay close to him – jarring him with subtle contact.

Despite these minor concerns, Nabers is an elite prospect whose game is tailor-made for where the NFL is going. I’ve called him a “flying Ferrari” on the field – a Back to the Future step forward in the game’s speed-and-space evolution.