Collin
Johnson.
Collin
Johnson.
Texas· 6'6"· 222 lb
"The biggest catch radius in the class attached to the smallest margin for error: if he could not win the vertical rep cleanly, there was no second gear to go get the ball anyway."Pre-draft read
Johnson is a 6-6, 222-pound catch-radius receiver who plays the ball above everyone else. At Texas he was the back-shoulder and red-zone answer, boxing corners out on fades, high-pointing 50-50 throws and turning contested targets into first downs. His 191-yard game at USC as a sophomore is the tape that circulated: long strides, easy separation on the vertical stem, and hands that extend well away from his frame.
What he is not is sudden. He builds speed instead of exploding into it, and short routes that require a hard plant and a change of direction are labored. He is a strider in the intermediate game and a problem down the sideline, but a defense that presses him and reroutes the stem can take him out of a rep before it starts.
Play-action offense with a defined boundary X role and heavy red-zone isolation usage
Year 1 fourth receiver and red-zone package target; ceiling is a No. 2 boundary X who wins on volume contested catches
A quick-game spread offense that asks receivers to win with suddenness on option routes and slot separation
He needed a quarterback willing to throw him open on back-shoulder and fade concepts rather than wait for separation.
Collin Johnson Highlights 2018-19 Texas WR
Two-season cut-up covering his 985-yard junior year and injury-shortened senior tape.
Collin Johnson 2018 Highlights: Space Cadet
His best full season, with the contested-catch and red-zone work that defined the projection.
Collin Johnson Texas WR Highlights
Pre-draft reel focused on catch radius, boundary body control and 50-50 wins.
Johnson is the son of Johnnie Johnson, an All-American defensive back at Texas and a first-round pick, and he chose the family school out of Valley Christian in San Jose as a four-star recruit. He contributed as a freshman, then broke out with 54 catches for 765 yards in 2017 and 68 for 985 with seven touchdowns in 2018, the best full season of his career.
His senior year got complicated. A hamstring injury limited him to seven games and 38 catches for 559 yards, though his per-game yardage was actually a career high at 79.9. He finished at Texas with 188 receptions for 2,624 yards and 15 touchdowns in 44 games, a genuinely productive Big 12 career.
The evaluation was about the gap between size and speed. Everyone saw the frame, the catch radius and the red-zone value. The questions were whether a strider who did not test as an explosive athlete could separate against NFL corners, and whether the hamstring issue signaled a body that would keep breaking down. He was a possession-and-boundary projection rather than a volume target, and Jacksonville took him 165th.
- 01
Catch radius
At 6-6 with long arms he attacks throws well outside his frame, and Texas used him as the answer on back-shoulder and red-zone fades.
- 02
Contested catches
Wins 50-50 balls by boxing corners out and high-pointing, which is how he produced 15 touchdowns and 2,624 career yards.
- 03
Big-game production
Posted 191 yards at USC and 177 against Oklahoma, showing the profile scaled against the best defenses on his schedule.
- 04
Sideline work
Excellent body control along the boundary, keeping feet in bounds on the vertical throws that define his best tape.
- 05
Four-year production
188 receptions in 44 Big 12 games with a career-high 79.9 yards per game as a senior even in an injury-shortened year.
- 01
Explosiveness
A strider who builds speed rather than generating it, with no burst out of the break to create late separation.
- 02
Route quickness
Struggles with hard plants and change of direction, which limits him to a vertical and possession tree at the NFL level.
- 03
Press coverage
Physical corners who reroute him early can take him out of a rep before he gets into the stem.
- 04
Durability
A hamstring injury cost him five games as a senior, and the same pattern erased his entire 2022 season in the NFL.
— — — positional median (p50)
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| Yr | Team | G | Rec | Yds | TD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Texas | 11 | 28 | 315 | 3 |
| 2017 | Texas | 13 | 54 | 765 | 2 |
| 2018 | Texas | 13 | 68 | 985 | 7 |
| 2019 | Texas | 7 | 38 | 559 | 3 |
| Career | — | 44 | 188 | 2624 | 15 |
Season lines from Tankathon's college log; receptions, yards, touchdowns and games sum exactly to the career totals of 188 catches for 2,624 yards and 15 scores across 44 games, which StatMuse also publishes. Games started are not listed per season in a verifiable source and are left unset rather than estimated.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Tall, long-striding receiver who holds roster spots as a depth boundary option and blocker.
Big-bodied contested-catch X who became a genuine No. 1 option without elite separation quickness.
Size-first receiver whose lack of separation and injury history collapsed the career after an early flash.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Jacksonville got real rookie production out of him: 14 games, 18 catches for 272 yards and two touchdowns at 15.1 yards a reception, the best year of his career. The Jaguars cut him at the 2021 cutdown, the Giants claimed him a day later, and he caught 11 passes for 105 yards in 12 games in New York. Then the body gave out. He went on injured reserve in August 2022 and missed the entire season, the Giants released him in August 2023, and the rest was practice squad work: three games in Chicago in 2023, nine more in 2024, two catches combined. He finished with 38 games, 31 receptions, 394 yards and two touchdowns.
The pre-draft concerns were the right ones. He never separated consistently enough to earn a real target share, and the injuries that cost him half his senior year cost him a full NFL season too. For a fifth-round pick, four years on rosters with a productive rookie campaign is not a disaster, but this is a miss relative to the size-and-bloodline profile that got him drafted.