Arizona State Football: Is Brandon Aiyuk an elite WR prospect?

There’s talk of Arizona State football’s Brandon Aiyuk climbing into the first round, but is he an elite wide receiver prospect?

A year ago, if you told me that Brandon Aiyuk would be one of the top receiver prospects in a loaded wide out draft, I would have called you crazy.

The junior wide out came to Arizona State as the No. 22 JUCO receiver from Sierra College in California and had a relatively solid impact right away. He was no N’Keal Harry-type of receiver, but he caught 33 passes for 474 yards and three touchdowns.

While those numbers exceeded expectations for the JUCO transfer right away, he still had plenty of work to do if he wanted to prove himself at the next level. He did just that in 2019, breaking out for 1,192 yards and eight touchdowns on 65 receptions. He more than doubled most of his production and became a yards after catch master.

Aiyuk went from Harry’s shadow to the top of the depth chart as freshman quarterback Jayden Daniels’ favorite target.

Now there’s talk that Aiyuk, a 6-foot-0, 201-pound wide out, could be approaching first-round status. Is he worthy of sneaking into that first round or will he be more of a project as a Day 2 pick?

Strengths

When watching his film, it’s clear what NFL teams like about Aiyuk. He’s quick, he can make things happen after the catch and has burners with 4.50 40-yard dash speed. Another thing that has to have scouts intrigued is his ability to improve drastically in a short period of time. He went from a raw JUCO transfer in 2018 to a No. 1 target in 2019 almost seamlessly.

Yards after catch is a huge plus in the NFL — just ask Golden Tate — and Aiyuk is the kind of guy who can make defenders miss on a regular basis with a wide array of slippery moves.

Weaknesses

With a receiver his size, you’d think that he would be great at handling physicality, but he often gets tripped up when jammed at the line of scrimmage. He needs to work on fighting off hand-checks and not letting it affect his route-running abilities.

Also, he catches a lot of passes with his body instead of high-pointing the ball and he’s not great in traffic. He doesn’t do a great job of fighting off defenders for contested catches.

Draft Projection

It’s hard to say just how successful he’ll be simply because we haven’t seen much of Aiyuk at the FBS level. He played just two seasons in Tempe and while he did break out in 2019 and become that No. 1 receiver for Arizona State, it was such a small sample size. He’s a high-risk, high-reward pick, but I don’t think he’s come anywhere near his ceiling in terms of potential.

Projection: Early second round