Jalen
Nailor.
Jalen
Nailor.
Michigan St.· 5'11"· 186 lb· 4.50s 40
Nailor, nicknamed Speedy, is a 5-foot-11, 186-pound receiver whose entire value starts with the vertical stem. He ran 4.50 at the combine with a 1.54 ten-yard split, but the functional speed is faster than the stopwatch: he led the Big Ten in yards per catch in 2020 and finished second in 2021.
He is more than a straight-line runner. A 4.28 short shuttle and 7.03 three-cone are excellent, and the short-area quickness lets him win off the line against press and separate at the top of a dig. The problem is mass. At 186 pounds with 30 1/4-inch arms, contested catches over the middle are not his game, and he gets rerouted by physical corners. He also has to stay healthy, which was the one thing he could not do in college.
A play-action offense with a true alpha receiver on the other side, where he runs the deep post and the over route off the back of the run game.
Year 1: fourth receiver, gadget carries and return work. Ceiling: starting flanker who turns 30 catches into 600 yards and double-digit scores.
A dink-and-dunk offense that asks him to win inside on option routes against safeties in a phone booth.
Give him one deep shot a game and he justifies the roster spot.
Highlights: Michigan State Wide Receiver Jalen Nailor
Conference network reel of his draft-year tape.
Jalen Nailor scores 3 touchdowns in first half vs Rutgers
The 221-yard, three-touchdown game that defined his 2021 season.
Jalen Nailor Michigan State WR Career Highlights
Four-year compilation showing the vertical speed and the release package.
Nailor was born in Palmdale, California and starred at Bishop Gorman in Las Vegas, where he won four state track titles and scored 28 touchdowns, including twelve on 41 catches for 807 yards as a senior. He committed to Arizona State, decommitted when Todd Graham was fired, and signed with Michigan State as a three-star recruit.
His college career is a story of flashes interrupted. He played eight games as a freshman in 2018 with eight catches for 138 yards and a pair of scores, plus nine carries for 128 yards out of the backfield. Injuries limited him to four games in 2019. In the shortened 2020 season he caught 26 passes for 515 yards and four touchdowns in seven games at nearly twenty yards a reception, the best average in the conference.
The 2021 season was the same equation again: nine games, 37 catches, 695 yards, six touchdowns, including a career day at Rutgers with 221 yards and three scores. He never played a full season and never reached 700 receiving yards, so the evaluation came down to whether a team believed the explosive plays were repeatable in a bigger sample. That is a sixth-round bet in most draft rooms, and Minnesota made it, taking a field-stretcher to work behind Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen.
- 01
Vertical speed
he led the Big Ten in yards per catch in 2020 and was the runner-up in 2021, averaging 16.9 yards for his career.
- 02
Explosive testing
a 4.50 forty with a 38-inch vertical and a 10-foot-8 broad jump backs up the deep speed on tape.
- 03
Change of direction
a 4.28 short shuttle and 7.03 three-cone are elite marks that show up in his release against press.
- 04
Big-play production
221 yards and three touchdowns in one half against Rutgers is the ceiling game teams kept going back to.
- 05
Versatility
he took snaps out of the backfield as a freshman and returned kicks and punts, adding value beyond the route tree.
- 01
Durability
he never played more than nine games in a season at Michigan State, missing stretches in three of his four years.
- 02
Play weight
186 pounds with 30 1/4-inch arms, and physical corners could reroute him and take away the stem entirely.
- 03
Contested catches
he is not a factor over the middle or on back-shoulder throws against tight coverage and bigger defenders.
- 04
Route tree
he lived on verticals and crossers in college with limited proof he could run the full professional route menu.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.50sp50
- Vertical
- 38inp50
- Broad jump
- 128inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.03sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.28sp50
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Rec | Yds | TD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Michigan St. | 8 | 8 | 138 | 2 |
| 2019 | Michigan St. | 4 | 15 | 106 | 0 |
| 2020 | Michigan St. | 7 | 26 | 515 | 4 |
| 2021 | Michigan St. | 9 | 37 | 695 | 6 |
| Career | — | 28 | 86 | 1454 | 12 |
The 2020 and 2021 lines are taken directly from his cfbstats player page at Michigan State. cfbstats has no roster entry for him in 2018 or 2019, so those two seasons come from the Sports-Reference college record. The seasons sum exactly to the career row of 28 games, 86 receptions, 1,454 yards and twelve touchdowns. One discrepancy is worth flagging: cfbstats credits him with 695 receiving yards in 2021 while some secondary sources list 694, and the cfbstats figure is used here, which is why the career total reads 1,454 rather than 1,453. His rushing work — seventeen carries for 163 yards and a touchdown across four seasons — is not carried in this receiving table.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Undersized complementary receiver who earns starts and a second contract as a WR3.
Deep threat who carries a real role for a decade because the vertical speed never stops mattering.
Pure speed receiver who flashes on a few deep balls and then bounces off rosters.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
This one worked, slowly. His first career catch came on a 13-yard fake punt against New Orleans in Week 4 of his rookie year, and his first touchdown was a 47-yard throw from Kirk Cousins against Green Bay in Week 17 in a three-catch, 89-yard game. He finished 2022 with nine catches for 179 yards in fifteen games, mostly on special teams. The old injury problem returned in 2023: he landed on injured reserve on September 21, came back on November 4, and caught three passes all season.
Then it clicked. In 2024 he played all seventeen games with seven starts and turned 28 catches into 414 yards and six touchdowns, and in 2025 he started eight games and set career bests with 29 receptions for 444 yards. The Raiders paid him accordingly, signing him on March 12, 2026 to a three-year, $35 million contract with $23 million guaranteed. Four seasons, 55 games, 69 catches, 1,066 yards and eleven touchdowns, and then a real free-agent contract. A sixth-round receiver who gets paid is an unambiguous hit.