BOULDER — One pro scout’s advice for Laviska Shenault?
Come back to Folsom Field, young man. Stick around.
“My guess is that he might be smart coming back,” Dan Shonka, the former Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs scout and general manager with the Ourlads.com scouting service, said of the CU Buffs’ junior receiver.
“Every team is different. But if (an NFL) general manager is in fear of his job, he’ll probably pass on him. And this is not a great year for Shenault to have a problem, because there’s tons of receivers out there, so he’s going to drop, anyway.”
Still, it was clear Friday night that NFL front offices haven’t given up their fascination with the Buffs’ 6-foot-2 wideout either, if the guest list at the press box inside Folsom was any indication.
At least 13 scouts from 10 NFL teams, including the Broncos, requested seats for CU’s tussle with USC. And while the increased interest was fueled partly by the men from Troy, Shenault gave the evaluators a lot to chew on early, piling up 189 yards from scrimmage through the game’s first three quarters — with 71 of them coming on a catch off a slant route that saw the Texans outrun the entire Trojans defense.
Which is one reason why the consensus before the season said that the strong, nimble Shenault would be an iron-clad lock to be taken in the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft, perhaps even among the top 10 picks.
Although after a junior season that’s seen Shenault miss nearly three weeks and almost two games with a core muscle injury to his upper body, that consensus hadn’t been sounding quite so certain anymore.
“I would think (we’d grade him) in the third round,” said Shonka, who’s helping to select talent for next January’s East-West Shrine Game. “We had graded him a little higher earlier.”
So did most everyone else. Going into Friday night’s home date with USC, the latest CBSSports.com mock draft projected Shenault being selected in the first round, but with pick No. 30. Bleacher Report’s 2020 mock from Oct. 5 was more optimistic, slotting the CU wideout to be taken with pick No. 14 overall.
But in both cases, the stock for the Texas speedster, who went into the weekend with 25 catches for 342 receiving yards and four touchdowns — two receiving, two rushing — has been dropping. Slowly.
“If Laviska had stayed fully healthy for his career, I would have suggested he leave early,” noted Pro Football Focus college analyst Jordan Plocher. “Since he has had multiple injuries, teams will have varying levels of concern about if he can stay healthy for a 16-game NFL season.”
And that health, not talent, is going to be the scouts’ No. 1 sticking point. Shenault came into this autumn coming off surgeries to repair 2018 injuries to both his shoulder and toe, dings that forced him to miss three contests about this time a year ago.
Stay and you could prove to scouts that your body can take the pounding of a marathon season. A first-round maybe in 2020 becomes a first-round lock in 2021.
Then again, if you get hurt again, that’s a gamble, too. It’s a year you didn’t get paid, a year of tire tread off your legs — and a year you don’t get back.
No. 2 has yet to tip his pitch, but underclassmen typically query the NFL Draft advisory board in December and receive notice after that. The deadline for underclassmen to apply for early entry is Jan. 20, and the league will give notice of eligible underclassmen to clubs on Jan. 24.
“That’s what (teams) do,” Shenault said of scouts’ critiques. “So regardless of what I say or what I do, it’s whatever they say. They’re going to feel how they feel.”
