When the Tennessee Titans finally drafted a receiver in the seventh-round out of UT-Martin, Colton Dowell, it almost felt like head coach Mike Vrabel was trolling us.
However, the more we learn about the small-school wideout, the easier it is to see why the Titans FINALLY pulled the trigger on a wide receiver with Dowell.
Based on Relative Athletic Score, Dowell is one of the more athletic wide receivers to ever be drafted. His RAS of 9.78 ranked 67th out of 3,062 receivers to be measured since 1987.
Of course, expecting anything out of a seventh-round receiver is never a good idea, but at least there’s a shred of hope with Dowell.
We aren’t the only ones liking what we’ve been learning about Dowell, who adds size (6-foot-3) as well as speed to Tennessee’s group. NFL.com draft analyst Lance Zierlein recently tweeted this:
“I have to write up every player who is drafted who I didn’t have draft profiles on and I just finished Colton Dowell from Tenn-Martin who was taken by the Titans,” Zierlein wrote on Twitter.
“He has good size, ran well, tested with elite explosiveness and was productive. Super pissed I missed out on him.”
To get an idea of just how under-the-radar Dowell was, we couldn’t find any detailed scouting reports from before the draft. We did, however, find two that were done after, one of which comes from Zierlein.