Packers Hosting Fastest Receiver in NFL Draft

Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur wants more speed at receiver. Nobody was faster at the Scouting Combine than the Baylor star.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers have a gaping hole at receiver that coach Matt LaFleur is in a hurry to fill.

“You’ve got to look at the totally of that room and just the collective efforts that each individual brings to that room,” LaFleur said at the NFL Spring Meetings in Palm Beach, Fla. “Certainly, if you look at our roster right now, we definitely need to get some speed in that room. We need a legit guy that can take off the top of the coverage. We lost a guy that was pretty good at doing that.”

That guy the Packers lost was Marquez Valdes-Scantling. The guy who could fill that role is Baylor’s Tyquan Thornton.

Thornton was the fastest man at this year’s Scouting Combine, running his 40-yard dash in 4.28 seconds. According to his Instagram, he is in Green Bay for a predraft visit.

In four seasons, Thornton caught 143 passes for 2,242 yards and 19 touchdowns. After playing in only six games in 2020, Thornton had a massive senior campaign with 62 receptions for 948 yards (15.3 average) and 10 touchdowns.

“I think he’s matured,” Baylor coach Dave Aranda said in November. “Ty has been, from the very beginning, blessed with great length and speed and athleticism. I think where Ty has really grown is his practice habits, his mindset, his attitude towards work. I think those things have really taken off, and I think there were some probably hard lessons in all that.”

He thrived in 2021 under the tutelage of Baylor receivers coach Chansi Stuckey, a former NFL receiver, and watched former Baylor star Denzel Mims closely.

“Playing wide receiver, you don’t get hit as much,” Thornton said. “Watching Denzel, we would go through blocking periods and seeing him grab guys and drive them. I wasn’t as big as Denzel, so that was the next step for me because I could run routes and catch the ball. I had to take my blocking game to the next level.”

At the Combine, he measured 6-foot-2 3/8 and 181 pounds with a 36.5-inch vertical leap. So, he’s a little shorter and a lot thinner than Valdes-Scantling but faster and more explosive than the 2018 fifth-round pick (6-foot-4, 206 pounds; 4.37 in the 40; 30.5 vertical).

By Relative Athletic Score, Thornton scored an 8.54 while Valdes-Scantling was a 9.27.

Thornton’s goal at Baylor’s recent pro day was to “take the 4.2 and put it into my routes. Playing with speed, show a little of my route-running skills and being able to catch the ball. … I'm trying to show them I'm a complete receiver.”

Thornton is considered a mid-Day 3 selection. His small hands normally wouldn’t make him a consideration for the Packers.