Trey
Palmer.
Trey
Palmer.
Nebraska· 6'0"· 192 lb· 4.33s 40
"The rare Day 3 receiver whose one elite trait is the one that cannot be coached, and whose NFL ceiling will be decided entirely by whether the route tree ever catches up to the timed speed."Pre-draft read
Palmer is a track-speed field-stretcher who lived outside the numbers at Nebraska and in the slot at LSU, and his identity is vertical: he eats cushion in three strides, tracks the deep ball over either shoulder, and finishes plays most receivers only run. The release package is speed over nuance — a clean burst off the line that threatens the top of the coverage every snap.
The secondary trait is run-after-catch juice on manufactured touches: jet sweeps, screens and crossers where he outruns angles. He is a limited blocker and a far better play-action weapon than possession target. The signature is the 60-yard strike — he led the nation with three catches of 70-plus yards in 2022.
Vertical play-action offense that manufactures touches
Year 1: WR4/WR5 field-stretcher and return specialist who plays 15-25 snaps a game on shot plays and jet sweeps. Ceiling: a starting Z who forces safety help and owns the return job.
A timing-and-rhythm West Coast offense that asks its receivers to win on stick routes and option breaks against press man on early downs — Palmer's release package and play strength do not hold up on that route tree.
Best deployed as a defined-role speed piece, not a full-tree starter.
Trey Palmer 2022 Nebraska Highlights
Full-season cutup of the 1,043-yard breakout year at Nebraska.
Nebraska scores an 87-yard TD vs Iowa
The 87-yard touchdown in his final college game, the fifth-longest passing play in Nebraska history.
Nebraska WR Trey Palmer TD at Rutgers
The game-winning 27-yard fourth-quarter touchdown catch at Rutgers in 2022.
A 6-foot, 192-pound perimeter speed receiver who spent three seasons at LSU as a return man and rotational target before transferring to Nebraska for a breakout final year. Palmer is a straight-line burner with legitimate track credentials — a four-time state 200-meter champion in Louisiana — and the tape matches the times.
The production came all at once. Across 2019-2021 at LSU he caught 41 passes for 458 yards and three scores while returning both a punt and a kickoff for touchdowns; in 2022 at Nebraska he caught 71 passes for 1,043 yards and nine touchdowns, setting the school single-season receiving yardage record and adding a 237-yard, two-touchdown afternoon at Purdue that stands as a program single-game record. The flags are the ones that come with a one-year profile: a thin frame, a route tree that leans on verticals and manufactured touches, and drops and body-catches that show up when the ball arrives inside traffic.
Boards had him as a Day 3 speed specialist with return value rather than a projected starter, and the 4.33 forty at the Combine kept him inside the top-200 conversation. At 191 overall, Tampa Bay was buying the one trait that does not need development — take-the-top-off speed — with special teams as the floor.
- 01
Vertical speed
a 4.33 forty with a 1.51 ten-yard split, and the tape confirms it: he erased cushion immediately and led the nation with three catches of 70-plus yards in 2022.
- 02
Deep-ball tracking
locates and adjusts to the ball over either shoulder on go routes and post shots, finishing 87- and 72-yard touchdowns in his final season at Nebraska.
- 03
Big-play radius after the catch
turned jet sweeps and crossers into chunk gains, including a 60-yard run at Purdue in the same game he set the school receiving record.
- 04
Return-game value
took a punt to the house at LSU in 2019 and a 93-yard kickoff back against South Carolina in 2020, giving him two ways onto a game-day roster.
- 05
Volume-proof final year
71 receptions for 1,043 yards and nine touchdowns on a struggling offense that lost its starting quarterback for multiple games down the stretch.
- 01
Frame and play strength
at 192 pounds he gets rerouted by physical press corners and struggles to hold his lane through contact on contested throws.
- 02
Route tree is narrow
the production is heavily vertical and manufactured; the intermediate breaking routes lack the tempo and footwork to separate against tight man coverage.
- 03
Hands inconsistency
too many body-catches and concentration drops in traffic, which limits how much a coordinator can trust him on third down.
- 04
One year of high-level production
three quiet seasons at LSU before the Nebraska breakout leaves real questions about whether the 2022 tape is the baseline or the ceiling.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.33sp50
- Vertical
- —in
- Broad jump
- —in
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Rec | Yds | TD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | LSU | — | 1 | 6 | 0 |
| 2020 | LSU | 8 | 10 | 108 | 0 |
| 2021 | LSU | 11 | 30 | 344 | 3 |
| 2022 | Nebraska | 12 | 71 | 1043 | 9 |
| Career | — | 40 | 112 | 1501 | 12 |
2020-2022 verified line by line on cfbstats (LSU id 365, Nebraska id 463, player 1104005). cfbstats does not publish 2019, so the freshman line (1 reception, 6 yards) comes from the official Nebraska bio, which also lists his LSU totals as 41 receptions for 458 yards and 3 TD in 28 games - those totals reconcile exactly with the cfbstats 2020-2021 lines plus the 2019 catch. Career games shown as 40 (28 at LSU per the official bio + 12 at Nebraska); StatMuse lists 39, so the 2019 games figure is left null rather than guessed. Starts are not published by cfbstats and are left null except 2022, where the Nebraska bio confirms 11. Return numbers (23 punt returns for 188 yards and a TD, 15 kickoff returns for 394 yards and a TD at LSU) are documented in the bio but are not part of this shape.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Undersized speed receiver who cycles through WR4 roles and special teams while filling a defined snap count.
Field-stretcher whose vertical trait carried a decade-long career despite an inconsistent route tree and hands.
Track-fast receiver whose frame and catch reliability kept him from ever holding a full-time role.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
51 receptions for 557 yards and 4 touchdowns in 33 games across three seasons with Tampa Bay and New Orleans, plus punt-return work in 2024.
Tampa Bay got exactly the rookie contribution a sixth-round pick is supposed to give: Palmer played all 17 games in 2023 with eight starts, catching 39 passes for 385 yards and three touchdowns as the WR3 behind Mike Evans and Chris Godwin, plus three carries for 22 yards. The 2024 season went backwards — 15 games, three starts, 12 catches for 172 yards and one touchdown — as the Buccaneers added receiver talent and moved him into a punt-return role (17 returns, 136 yards). Tampa Bay waived him at the 2025 cutdown after shopping him, New Orleans claimed him off waivers on August 27, 2025, and he spent that season buried on the depth chart: one game, no targets. He was waived again at the 2026 cutdown and re-signed to the Saints practice squad on September 2, 2026.
In hindsight the evaluation was right and the projection was honest. Palmer was a pure speed trait with a one-year production profile, and speed alone bought him a real rookie role and a fourth NFL season. What never developed was the part that makes a speed receiver stick: a reliable route tree and hands that hold up in traffic. That is the sixth round working as intended — a low-cost swing that returned 51 career catches and a special-teams role rather than a starter.