A.t.
Perry.
A.t.
Perry.
Wake Forest· 6'4"· 198 lb· 4.47s 40
"The tallest ball-winner in a class short on them: a 6-5 boundary receiver whose two-year Wake Forest run was built almost entirely on winning throws nobody else in the stadium could reach."Pre-draft read
A 6-5 boundary X receiver who wins the way tall receivers are supposed to win, Perry played almost every snap on the outside at Wake Forest and made his living on the deep third. He tracks the ball over either shoulder, adjusts late without breaking stride, and high-points contested throws with long arms and genuinely soft hands.
The secondary trait is the stride: he is a long-strider who eats cushion rather than a burner, and he stacks corners by the 15-yard mark instead of running past them. He is a willing but unspectacular blocker in the run game and offers little after the catch. The signature is the back-shoulder fade — Wake Forest's slow-mesh offense held safeties, and Perry turned one-on-one sideline throws into a weekly guarantee.
Vertical play-action offense that isolates an X receiver on the boundary and lets him win one-on-one outside the numbers
Year 1 as the third receiver and designated red-zone/fade target playing 20-30 snaps a game; ceiling is a boundary starter who wins the contested-catch throws a possession offense needs on third down
A timing-and-spacing offense that motions receivers into the slot and asks them to win on option routes and yards after catch, where his weight and lack of short-area suddenness get exposed
He needs a quarterback willing to throw him open into coverage; with a checkdown-first passer the entire skill set goes unused.
A.T. Perry 2022 Highlights | Wake Forest WR | 2023 NFL Draft Prospect
Full senior-season reel: boundary fades, deep-ball tracking and contested catches outside the numbers.
A.T. Perry Wake Forest Highlights
Career highlight cut showing the 2021 breakout, back-shoulder work and red-zone jump balls.
Saints Rookie WR A.T. Perry Looks SHARP In Debut | 2023 Preseason Week 1 All Catches
Every target from his first NFL preseason game, the tape that won him a rookie-year role in New Orleans.
A two-time first-team All-ACC receiver and the centerpiece of one of college football's most distinctive passing offenses, Perry is a long, lean outside target with a catch radius that changes the math on every one-on-one throw. He is not a route technician and he is not a yards-after-catch player; he is a ball-winner who makes quarterbacks look accurate on throws that are not.
The production came in a burst. He was a non-factor for two seasons, then exploded for 1,293 yards and 15 touchdowns as a redshirt sophomore in 2021 and followed it with 1,096 yards and 11 scores in 2022. That two-year run was built on Wake Forest's RPO-heavy scheme, which manufactured single coverage on the boundary and let him hunt fades and post-corners. The flags are real: a listed 198 pounds at the combine on a 6-5 frame, contact at the line that knocks him off track, a route tree that rarely asked him to win underneath, and drops that show up when he has to work through traffic rather than over a defender.
Boards had him as a Day 3 developmental X with a starter's ceiling if he added weight and refined releases, generally in the fourth-to-sixth range. New Orleans, needing size opposite Chris Olave and Michael Thomas, took the catch radius at 195 and bet a red-zone role would come first.
- 01
Catch radius
at 6-5 with 33 1/4-inch arms he turns any sideline throw into a jump ball, and his 2021 tape is a reel of receptions outside the frame of the coverage.
- 02
Ball tracking
he locates the deep ball over either shoulder without slowing down, which is why Wake Forest could throw him open on go routes rather than scheme him open.
- 03
Red-zone value
26 touchdowns over his last two seasons on a diet of fades and back-shoulder throws, a role that translates to Sunday almost immediately.
- 04
Long speed for the size
a 4.47 forty at 6-3 1/2 confirmed the tape: he stacks corners with stride length and stays on top of the coverage down the boundary.
- 05
Hands away from the frame
he plucks rather than traps and holds on through contact at the catch point, which is the trait that made him a first-team All-ACC pick twice.
- 01
Play strength
listed under 200 pounds at the combine, he gets rerouted by physical press corners and struggles to hold his stem against contact through the first 10 yards.
- 02
Route tree
Wake Forest's offense lived on verticals and RPO layups, so he arrived with little tape releasing into option routes or winning underneath against leverage.
- 03
After the catch
he is a straight-line mover who goes down on first contact, and almost none of his college yardage came from creating on his own.
- 04
Late bloomer profile
two quiet seasons before the breakout raises the question of how much of the production was scheme and single coverage rather than separation ability.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.47sp50
- Vertical
- 35inp50
- Broad jump
- 133inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Rec | Yds | TD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Wake Forest | 9 | 4 | 62 | 1 |
| 2020 | Wake Forest | 8 | 15 | 211 | 1 |
| 2021 | Wake Forest | 14 | 71 | 1293 | 15 |
| 2022 | Wake Forest | 13 | 81 | 1096 | 11 |
| Career | — | 44 | 171 | 2662 | 28 |
cfbstats verified line by line for 2020 (8 G, 15-211, 1 TD), 2021 (14 G, 71-1,293, 15 TD) and 2022 (13 G, 81-1,096, 11 TD). cfbstats does not host a 2019 page for him, so that row (9 G, 4-62, 1 TD) comes from Tankathon's draft profile and matches the official Wake Forest record. 2018 was a redshirt year with no game action, so there is no 2018 row. Receiving yards and touchdowns sum exactly to the published career totals of 2,662 and 28. Documented discrepancies: Tankathon and Wikipedia list 2020 as 7 and 6 games respectively where cfbstats has 8, so the career games figure here (44) is one to two higher than the 43 those sources publish, and StatMuse lists 172 career receptions against the 171 that the season rows produce. Starts are null because cfbstats does not publish them for receivers.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Tall, thin outside receiver who flashes early, sticks on rosters for his size and special teams, and never locks down a target share.
Ceiling if the frame fills out: a long-striding field-stretcher who holds a starting boundary job for a decade on vertical value alone.
Floor if the play strength never comes: a Day 3 receiver who lives on the back of the roster and cycles through practice squads.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
New Orleans got the red-zone player it drafted and then lost the roster spot to math. Perry made the team as a rookie in 2023, appeared in 10 games with three starts and produced 12 catches for 246 yards and four touchdowns at 20.5 yards a reception, including a two-touchdown Week 18 against Atlanta and his first score against Minnesota. Then the offense changed around him: the Saints waived him on October 4, 2024, and Denver signed him to the practice squad four days later. He signed a reserve/future deal with Denver in January 2025, opened camp on the active/PUP list, and bounced between waivers and the practice squad in August. Pittsburgh gave him a reserve/futures contract on January 29, 2026, and waived him on August 7, 2026.
In hindsight the evaluation and the outcome match almost too neatly. Everything the tape promised showed up in year one, and everything it warned about is why there has been no year two: the catch radius produced four touchdowns on 12 receptions, and the play strength and route limitations meant he never earned a full-time role once teams stopped scheming him one-on-one looks. He has not caught an NFL pass since his rookie season. For pick 195 that rookie year is real value, but a receiver who peaks in his first autumn and spends the next two years on practice squads is a Day 3 flyer that did not compound.