2016 NFL Draft: Updated Prospect Radar Post-Week 15

We're now heading into Week 16 of the NFL season. This is the time for franchises to clinch playoff spots and top-10 draft selections. With very little college football being played this weekend, this week's draft stock piece will be more centralized around prospects who lost some steam down the stretch in the 2015 regular season, despite coming out hot to begin the year.

We'll cover four players who are trending downward, plus show a prospect from this weekend's action, one of the few players in this early bowl slate who actually has a shot at cracking in this class' top 100.

Stock Down: Robert Nkemdiche, DL, Ole Miss

Thomas Graning/Associated Press

As high as we may have been on Robert Nkemdiche recently, his stock is on a downward spiral. Since high school, Nkemdiche has been pinned as one of the most talented players in the sport. He has the size and freak athleticism that only comes around a handful of times per generation. His sheer explosion off the line of scrimmage is enough to entirely ruin an offense. Converting roles in defenses through his career at Ole Miss has had its bumpy moments, but for the most part, Nkemdiche has been held on a platform above most every other player in the country.

Nkemdiche made huge news earlier this month when he fell out of a hotel window in Atlanta, which luckily didn't injure him but did result in a marijuana arrest. The narrative on him has changed quickly, as he was thought to be a top-three pick, but now is suspended for his bowl game and has declared for the NFL draft. This is after an alleged photo of him smoking marijuana was published last regular season.

Just last month, Nkemdiche's brother, Denzel, who also plays for the Rebels, was hospitalized for an undisclosed reason. There are just a lot of question marks surrounding Robert Nkemdiche's background, and an NFL team will absolutely need to dig to the very bottom of his character if it's going to spend a top-five pick on him.

In all fairness, these occurrences do not make either Nkemdiche brother bad people. Both are often talked about in a much better light than what these stories make them out to be. NFL team’s strife with Robert Nkemdiche possibly having a drug abuse issue is not necessarily that he won’t be able to play well, but that he won’t be allowed to play due to suspensions after failed drug tests. The best ability is availability and constant suspension is unacceptable regardless of talent, as Josh Gordon can attest to. Robert Nkemdiche has all the talent in the world, but the fear of a lingering drug vice may push him to the middle or back half of the first round instead of the top-five range that his talent is deserving of.

Current draft projection: Out of top 10

Stock Down: Gunner Kiel, QB, Cincinnati

Chris O'Meara/Associated Press

Gunner Kiel’s collegiate career has been a roller coaster. He's been on track to play for Indiana, LSU, Notre Dame and Cincinnati in his 22-year-old life. Kiel was forced to sit a year due to an NCAA rule when he transferred from Notre Dame, but he took over the reins of the Bearcat offense in 2014. Kiel played well in his first year as a starting quarterback. His lack of experience reared its head every so often, but Kiel displayed a handful of legitimate NFL traits from comfort to anticipation to accuracy. It appeared that after another year or two of working out the kinks in his game, Kiel could have been a first-round quarterback.

2015 was not so kind to Kiel. He struggled throughout the earlier portion of the season. Most notably, he threw four interceptions against the Temple Owls in Cincinnati’s second game of the season. Temple has one of the more disciplined defenses in the country, leaving Kiel’s inexperience to be taken advantage of.

Just two weeks later against Memphis, Kiel took a disgusting hit to the head. He was then taken into the locker room for concussion protocol and ruled out for at least the remainder of the game. As expected, Kiel missed the next couple of games following his concussion.

Between his horrendous turnover-happy performance vs. Temple and his concussion, Kiel fell of the map for NFL draft analysts. He had a handful of expectations that he failed to live up to that have turned evaluators away. In fact, Kiel regressed and became exposed, if anything. It became more apparent that his arm may be an issue at the next level, and that he needs much more work cleaning up his feet than was assumed. Kiel now has much more of an uphill battle heading into the NFL or back at Cincinnati next year.

Kiel should be advised to go back to school. To put the icing on the cake, he's not practicing in the Bearcats' bowl game because of a "personal matter."

Current draft projection: Day-three pick

Stock Down: A'Shawn Robinson, DL, Alabama

LM Otero/Associated Press

A player’s body type and helmet he wears on Saturday can get him a long way in regards to how the NFL views him as a prospect. More so than any other player in the nation, A’Shawn Robinson is a prime example of this luxury. Robinson is listed at about 6’4”, 320 pounds at 20 years old and is a starting defensive lineman for Alabama. Those two facts alone have garnered a lot of attention for Robinson, though he has little to show for it. When Alabama’s game against LSU rolled around, Robinson finally legitimized the attention he had been receiving.

Well, Robinson legitimized himself for the week.

Up until the LSU game, Robinson had little to show for his hype. He then unleashed all of his talent and wreaked havoc on the LSU offensive line. He played a key in keeping then-Heisman candidate Leonard Fournette at bay. Fournette was forced to bounce every play outside because of Robinson, while the remainder of the ‘Bama front sealed off the edge to contain Fournette. Robinson even made contributions on special teams. LSU attempted a field goal and, in a display of absurd athleticism, Robinson leaped over LSU’s offensive line and swatted away the field-goal attempt. 

Though, just as LSU did with Tajh Boyd a few years ago in a bowl game, the Tigers made Robinson appear much better than he has at any other point in the year. Robinson did not follow up the LSU games with more stretches of dominance. Rather, he faded away and struggled to make a strong impact for the rest of the regular season.

That is not to say Robinson is devoid of talent. Robinson does have the size and athleticism that NFL teams would love to mold, but he has a long way to go in terms of figuring out how to use his body to win. Some team will like him a lot as a moldable piece of clay, that much is certain. Though, Robinson is not quite the perennial top-10 pick that he was made out to be because of the LSU game, and he will more than likely take a bit of a tumble on draft weekend, especially because of how talented the defensive line class is in its entirety.

Current draft projection: Middle first-round pick

Stock Down: Corey Coleman, WR, Baylor

Sue Ogrocki/Associated Press

The first half of the season was much kinder to Corey Coleman than the second half has been. Through the first eight games of Baylor’s season, Coleman accumulated 20 touchdowns and 1,175 receiving yards. Coleman’s production to that point was one of the most impressive stretches of explosive play that college football has seen in the past decade.

The fast-paced, attacking nature of Baylor’s offense played a role in Coleman’s hyper-production, but he was, and is, incredibly talented in his own right. Coleman’s production has fallen off as of late, though.

In his last four games of the season, Coleman only racked up 185 yards and zero touchdowns. This fall from glory could quite easily be credited to playing better teams or having had a lucky streak of play early on. Thankfully for Coleman, neither of those possibilities are the real issue.

The problem, more than anything, was Baylor’s quarterback depth chart getting ravaged. Starting quarterback Seth Russell missed the final five games due to injury, forcing freshman Jarrett Stidham to finish the year as the starter. Of course, Stidham failed to finish the year as well.

Sophomore Chris Johnson had to step in to finish the Oklahoma State game and start the final two games of the year, but even he failed to get himself through the final game, forcing wide receiver Lynx Hawthorne to throw 22 passes against Texas in the last game of the season.

Coleman barely had a quarterback to get him the ball in the tail end of the year. It was not just Coleman who had fallen off, it was the entire Baylor offense. With the entire offense being derailed, Baylor could not run its attacking, downfield style of passing that it so loves to use to feed Coleman the ball. Without being able to push the ball down the field, the rushing offense faced more resistance, thus putting a damper on the offense as a whole.

Coleman’s falling stock is not so much his fault as it is the fault of a terrible string of injuries surrounding him. When a third string quarterback and wide receiver take over the offense for the last 10 quarters of the season, the passing offense is going to lose its electricity regardless of the talent at receiver.

To top it off, Coleman is going to miss Baylor’s bowl game as a result of a sports hernia. What Coleman did prior to the decimation of his quarterbacks can not be taken away from him, but people tend to remember what happened most recently. Even if he is no less of a player than he was before, Coleman now feels like he is not quite on the same level as other receivers in the class like Laquon Treadwell.

Coleman is also going to miss his bowl game due to a hernia issue. Once the hottest name in college football, he's become an afterthought late in the season.

Current draft projection: Late first-round pick

Stock Up: Scooby Wright, LB, Arizona

Andres Leighton/Associated Press

If you've been watching Pac-12 football for the past two years or so, it's hard to not have noticed Philip "Scooby" Wright. The linebacker, as a true sophomore, was a consensus All-American, won the Bronko Nagurski Award and the Chuck Bednarik Award. He was also a huge impact in Arizona's win over the Oregon Ducks, who went to the national championship game in 2014 and only dropped one game in the regular season.

Unfortunately, his junior season didn't go as planned. He entered the season with great expectations, but between a knee and foot injury, he was basically shelved for the entire season. In Saturday's Gildan New Mexico Bowl, though, he returned from his banged-up status to finish the day with 15 tackles. The game started with a bang when he made the first three tackles to force a three-and-out.

After the game, he officially declared for the 2016 NFL draft a year early. He's really just riding off of the hype from his 2014 campaign, but that was more than enough to get the NFL to accept his resume, plus he doesn't seem to be bothered by his 2015 injuries anymore. There was no bigger game for a prospect this weekend than Wright, who passed with flying colors.

Current draft projection: Day-two pick