Dontayvion
Wicks.
Dontayvion
Wicks.
Virginia· 6'1"· 206 lb· 4.62s 40
"Wicks does not run past corners so much as he out-waits them, and the last ten yards of every deep ball are where a fifth-round receiver turned into a starter in Green Bay."Pre-draft read
Perimeter X receiver who lived on the boundary at Virginia, built around one elite trait: tracking the deep ball. Wicks stacks corners with a long, gliding stride rather than a burst, wins the top of the route with subtle stems and late hand usage, and adjusts to the flight of the football about as well as anyone in the class.
Secondary trait is contested-catch strength: he plays bigger than 206 pounds at the catch point and finishes through contact. Almost exclusively a pass-game piece, and a willing but unrefined blocker in the run game. The athletic ceiling is vertical rather than sudden (4.62 speed, 39-inch vertical), so the signature is the ball in the air, not the separation before it.
Vertical play-action offense that pushes the ball down the boundary off condensed formations
Year 1 as the third receiver taking deep-shot and red-zone targets on the outside; ceiling is a high-end WR3 who wins the sideline throw every week
A quick-game, option-route offense that asks the X to win inside leverage on slants and choice routes off press — his release counters and short-area quickness cannot carry that volume
Best paired with a quarterback willing to throw him open late on back-shoulder and 50-50 balls
Dontayvion Wicks 2021 Regular Season Highlights | Virginia WR
The record-setting 1,203-yard season: deep tracking and contested finishes on the boundary.
Dontayvion Wicks Virginia WR Highlight || Matchup Nightmare
College cut-up showing catch radius and back-shoulder work against ACC corners.
Dontayvion Wicks best plays in 2-TD game vs. Lions | Week 13
NFL two-touchdown game in Green Bay, the red-zone version of his college catch-point win.
A boundary receiver whose football identity is the vertical shot. Wicks is a long-strider who eats cushion, builds to speed instead of exploding into it, and turns the last ten yards of a route into a jump-ball advantage. His game is built on tracking, timing and body control down the sideline rather than on route-tree versatility or manufactured touches underneath.
The production tells two very different stories. In 2021 he broke Virginia's single-season record with 1,203 receiving yards on 57 catches and nine touchdowns, averaging 21.1 yards a grab in an offense that let him hunt shots every week. In 2022, with a new staff, a new quarterback and a season the program never got to finish, he fell to 30 catches for 430 yards and two scores in eight games. Evaluators had to decide which year was the player, and the drops that showed up on tape in that second season made the answer harder.
The board treated him as a Day 3 vertical specialist rather than a starter-in-waiting: real ball skills, real size, but a limited release package and a 4.62 forty that capped the ceiling. Green Bay, stocking a young receiver room around a first-year starting quarterback, took the tracking and the catch radius at 159 and bet the rest of the route tree could be taught.
- 01
Ball tracking
Locates and adjusts to the deep ball as naturally as anyone in the class, altering speed and body angle late without breaking stride down the boundary.
- 02
Catch radius
Long arms and 10-inch hands let him pluck throws well outside his frame, and he finishes back-shoulder and over-the-shoulder targets through contact.
- 03
Contested strength
Plays bigger than 206 pounds at the catch point, boxing out corners and hanging on when the hit arrives before the ball settles.
- 04
Vertical production
Averaged 21.1 yards per catch on a school-record 1,203-yard season in 2021, proof the deep-shot role is real rather than projected.
- 05
Explosive lower half
A 39-inch vertical and 130-inch broad jump show the leaping base that turns 50-50 throws down the sideline into completions.
- 01
Separation speed
A 4.62 forty means he does not run past NFL corners; his vertical wins come from tracking and body control rather than pure escape.
- 02
Release package
Limited counters against press, and physical corners can reroute him early and take the timing off the deep shots he lives on.
- 03
Drops
Concentration lapses showed up on routine targets in 2022, an odd flaw for a receiver whose calling card is hands at the catch point.
- 04
Route tree
Underdeveloped in the intermediate game, with rounded breaks that let defenders sit on the dig and comeback routes.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.62sp50
- Vertical
- 39inp50
- Broad jump
- 130inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Rec | Yds | TD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Virginia | 7 | 3 | 61 | 1 |
| 2021 | Virginia | 12 | 57 | 1203 | 9 |
| 2022 | Virginia | 8 | 30 | 430 | 2 |
| Career | — | 27 | 90 | 1694 | 12 |
Did not play in 2020 (no season row). Season totals sum exactly to career totals; targets: 8 (2019), 95 (2021), 72 (2022), 175 career.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Vertical specialist whose value is entirely in the deep shot and whose hands are the running argument against him.
Same long-strider boundary profile with the deep-shot role, but Reynolds turned it into a reliable multi-year WR3.
Size and tracking without separation, drifting into a fourth-receiver and special teams role.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Green Bay put him in the rotation immediately. As a rookie in 2023 he played 15 games and caught 39 passes for 581 yards and four touchdowns, third on a young receiver group and trusted enough to start in the playoff run. In 2024 the snaps stayed but the efficiency slipped: 39 catches for 415 yards and five touchdowns across 17 games, with drops becoming the storyline around him. In 2025 he settled into a rotational third or fourth role — 30 catches for 332 yards and two scores in 14 games — before Green Bay traded him to Philadelphia in April 2026, where he reunited with Sean Mannion, his old quarterbacks coach.
In hindsight this is close to a model fifth-round outcome. Three seasons, 46 games, 18 starts and 108 catches from pick 159 is real value, and the ball-tracking that carried the evaluation showed up in the red zone and on shot plays. What never arrived was the separation to make him more than a complementary piece, and the hands that looked like a strength in college became the knock in the pros. The board read him correctly: a vertical role player, not a WR2.