Pocket watching: 5 prospects who left money on the field in 2024
After an offseason of hype, some players just didn't take the next step forward
From Texas wide receiver Isaiah Bond to a handful more, there are some players who did not help their NFL Draft cause in 2024.
With today, Wednesday January 15, being the deadline for 2025 NFL Draft prospects to officially declare with the Shrine Game and Reese’s Senior Bowl next up, we’re going to take a look at some players who are heading to the professional level who left money on the table this season.
Every name mentioned in this article were mocked in the first round in the offseason and throughout summer scouting. Every name mentioned followed up all of that hype with a down season as they look to take their game to the next level.
Does this mean they will not correct some issues, figure out their game, and become a successful professional football player? No. But it means their draft stock as of today and marching toward April is substantially lower than it was heading into the season.
So let’s talk about Bond and a handful more:
WR Isaiah Bond, Texas
Isaiah Bond made the questionable decision to declare for the 2025 NFL Draft after a spotty junior season after transferring from Alabama to Texas. In the perfect offense for his skillset and with plenty of opportunities, Bond vanished into the background while Houston transfer Matthew Golden stole the spotlight.
He finished the season with just 34 catches for 540 yards and four touchdowns for the Longhorns while Golden outproduced him to 987 yards and nine touchdowns. Bond became invisible down the stretch of the season, catching just four passes for 57 yards in his last five games.
It gets worse when you talk to Texas staffers as well, who point out that he checked out after he suffered an ankle injury. This got to the point where Texas stuck Bond exclusively on the left side of the field knowing that quarterback Quinn Ewers struggles to throw in that direction and sticks to the right side and middle of the field.
When you watch Bond down the stretch, it makes sense why they had him doing cardio as there was evident frustration on Ewers’ face when targeting who was supposed to be his most lethal target this year due to miscommunications on pre-snap signals and hots.
If Jermaine Burton can go Day 2 despite his concerns then so can Bond, but it’s a gamble for whatever team drafts him.
OL Emery Jones Jr., LSU
I came into the season extraordinarily high on Emery Jones Jr. He was my OT1 in the class from summer scouting given the evident physical gifts he possesses. You shoot for traits in summer scouting and hope that another offseason leads to further development.
Jones has heavy hands and strong grip strength, extraordinary core strength and hip flexibility to recover and anchor out of some of the funkiest positions an offensive tackle could find him in, and possesses explosiveness to fire off the ball and displace the man across from him. But he didn’t technically put it all together in 2024.
The three-year starter at LSU now enters the NFL Draft as raw technically as he was a year ago. And this has led many, including myself, to now see him as a guard despite his athletic tools. If he didn’t figure it out in three years at LSU at tackle, will he ever?
All 32 teams are seemingly starving for offensive line talent, so Jones still is likely to go top-75 this Spring, but he had first round grades over the summer and was frequently mocked as a top-15 pick.
CB Denzel Burke, Ohio State
It’s been a roller coaster of a career for Ohio State cornerback Denzel Burke.
It seems like Burke’s psyche can be shaken on a week-to-week basis as he will go through spurts of elite play, then long stretches of flat-out unacceptable play. This has been the case for Burke throughout his career. He started with an elite freshman season before bottoming out as a sophomore. He then rebounded with a stellar junior year before putting together a roller coaster of a 2024 year as a senior.
The Oregon game was a turning point for Burke’s season in 2024, where wideout Evan Stewart had him in a blender. Burke was on the hook for 162 yards and two touchdowns in that game, giving up seven catches on seven targets.
And if there is one position where you need the utmost confidence, it is at cornerback.
He has recently exited the College Football Playoffs semifinals with an upper-body injury as well. He’ll have to fight through pain to put his best tape out there in his last collegiate game against Notre Dame.
Burke is certainly not a Day 1 player in the 2025 NFL Draft class anymore, where he was being mocked over the summer, but just where will he come off the board?
DT Deone Walker, Kentucky
Kentucky defensive tackle Deone Walker was a summer scouting darling given his pass-rush prowess and fluidity at 6-foot-7. However, his 2024 tape is just… not good.
To make matters worse, Walker has a slender lower half that makes it difficult for him to anchor in against the run. His pad level and tendency to pop high out of his stance erase any limited leverage he already has at that height.
After racking up 7.5 sacks and 13 tackles behind the line of scrimmage with 51 pressures in 2023, Walker followed it up with just one sack, five tackles for loss, and 22 pressures in the same amount of games this season. Walker vanishes on tape consistently and now will vanish out of the first round as a result.
It’s tough to project how a player like Walker will translate to the next level and if his leverage issues have much room to improve given his lack of knee bend and flexibility.
QB Jalen Milroe, Alabama
In a weak quarterback class, Alabama’s Jalen Milroe could still be the third quarterback off the board. If I had to guess today, I would say he will be.
This doesn’t mean that Milroe took a step forward in 2024. After finishing sixth in Heisman voting under former offensive coordinator Tommy Rees, Milroe took a step back under new head coach Kalen DeBoer this past season. His turnovers went way up and his ability as a passer seemingly got more distraught as the season went along.
After lighting up Georgia, the trajectory was downhill for Milroe, culminating in a UDFA-type outlook against teams like South Carolina, Tennessee, and his final college game against Michigan. His Weighted On-Target Percentage on the year was just 59 percent, near the bottom in the class.
The physical gifts are evident. He runs a 4.3 40-yard dash and has been the best athlete on Alabama’s football team over the last two seasons and generates a good deal of velocity on the football. However, he has a long way to go to become an NFL quarterback given his 2024 body of work. It will take a Jalen Hurts-like structure built around him to make it happen.
It’s not an impossible ask of an NFL coaching staff, but it’s a steep uphill climb.