The Great NFL Draft Debate: Amari Cooper or Kevin White?
Coke versus Pepsi. Microsoft versus Apple. Nike versus Reebok.
Ask any group of people which one of these is better than the other, and what you'll likely find is that there are staunch defenders and critics on both sides of the fence, leading many of us to wonder if one truly is better than the other, or if this is all just a matter of preference?
In the next few weeks, NFL general manager's throughout this league face a similar conundrum as they prepare for the 2015 NFL Draft: Alabama's Amari Cooper versus West Virginia's Kevin White.
In an effort to answer this question, I decided to rate White and Cooper against one another across four specific categories that have served as strong indicators for wide receiver success in the NFL:
1. Collegiate Track Record
2. Size and Build
3. Speed and Agility
4. Power and Explosiveness
In terms of collegiate production, I measured not just the absolute values each player amassed for each category, but also the trajectory of these performances over each player's career.
When looking at their physical attributes, I asked how each wideout stacked up against one another based not only on traditional measures, but also on my own PACE metric (which measures how much a player's Combine performance falls, above or below expectation).
And finally, to project how these attributes might translate into the NFL, I asked -- based on these measurements -- which NFL receivers each wideout compared most favorably to.
