Joe Hortiz was asked by Kay Adams on the Up & Adams show about passing on a wide receiver with the fifth pick given the state of the class. While he specifically mentioned their enthusiasm to take Joe Alt, Adams asked Hortiz where he stands on Quentin Johnston specifically after Year 1:
Quentin was a player we liked in Baltimore as well last year. When he was coming out of college, he was an elite size/speed athlete. And you saw some rawness to his game, but as big as he is, 6’3″, you watch him drop his weight, getting in and out of breaks, come to balance at the top of the route, get out quickly. He can do some rare things for a player his size. Jim was on the other sideline in one of his better games and so we’ve all seen it. We believe in it. He’s a great kid, he’s a great worker. Everyone here has a high opinion of him. I believe he’s really gonna launch. I really do. His skillset is great, we’re gonna work with him, make him better and better.
Jim Harbaugh also mentioned the Michigan-TCU College Football Playoff semifinal in one of his first conversations with Johnston when he took the job. For 2024, it appears that he has some of the institutional backing of the franchise brain trust as long as he works to improve.
It’s interesting to hear Hortiz describe Johnston as having a degree of “rawness” coming out. He was pegged as a receiver with a lower floor but a higher ceiling relative to the red of his class. That prototypical “size/speed” was always going to get him drafted in the first round. But whether he can develop further past his college self will determine whether that draft slot was worth it.
After adding Ladd McConkey, D.J. Chark, Brenden Rice, and Cornelius Johnson, the motto for the wide receiver room is, as Harbaugh says: “Competitors welcome.” That goes for Johnston as well.