Texas WR Adonai Mitchell Scouting Notes

All of Jon's scouting notes on Texas WR Adonai Mitchell, a 2024 NFL Draft prospect expected to come off the board in the 1st-2nd round.

Adonai Mitchell is one of the hardest evaluations I’ve ever done.

The talent is through the roof with Mitchell. At 6-2, 205, the Longhorns star has excellent size and strength for the position, combined with tantalizing athleticism. The 4.34 speed, 39.5-inch vertical and 11’4 broad jump show up on tape constantly, as Mitchell possesses a rare combination of sky-walking ability for high balls, foot quickness to achieve separation and long speed to outrun defenders vertically.

At Texas, Mitchell ran a pretty complete route tree, albeit with an extremely varied process. Some games, the majority of routes were run full speed, breaks were crisp, releases were sudden and separation ability was on full display. At other times, Mitchell seemed to be only playing when he felt like it, even when his route was part of the primary progression.

He loved working off the line of scrimmage against press man coverage, where his shiftiness, crossover steps and strength were too much for cornerbacks to handle. At least 7-8 times in the five games I studied, Mitchell forced the opposing cornerback to turn completely around from a press position within a few yards of the line of scrimmage. For a receiver his size, that release ability is some of the best I’ve seen.

But against off or zone coverage, Mitchell seemed to lose focus at times. He didn’t always accelerate off the line, his routes often lacked pace and intensity and rounding off breaks to drift into the end of his patterns was a common mistake. Sometimes Mitchell seem preoccupied with making opposing cornerbacks look silly in one-on-one situations, but finishing the route with the same level of focus didn’t always happen. 

In one game, Mitchell left a cornerback in the dust with his release, but turned around to point and taunt his opponent rather than finish the route (the ball was going elsewhere to be fair). I appreciate the mental games, and I do think his confidence is through the roof. However, playing every play at full speed from snap to whistle in the NFL is going to be a necessity. For whatever reason, Mitchell didn’t do that in college.

There are more than just flashes of Mitchell doing the high end stuff you want first round wide receiver prospects doing. Against Washington and Alabama, he skied for contested catches, showing ridiculous hangtime and elevation to pluck the ball away over quality cornerbacks. Against Washington, Mitchell mistimed his jump on a back shoulder fade and still hung in the air long enough to snatch a contested touchdown. Kansas State’s cornerbacks didn’t have a prayer of staying in front of him, and they were far from the only ones. Mitchell blazed past many secondaries as a vertical threat, and showed excellent stop-start quickness to throw on the brakes and come back to the ball too. Put his best 20 college plays together, and he looks like nearly the complete package.

Which makes the half-hearted reps or the wandering routes or the misreads of the ball downfield or the lack of effort after the catch even more frustrating. In his two years at Georgia, Mitchell grabbed just 38 balls for over 500 yards, but caught seven touchdowns. After transferring to Texas, Mitchell finally broke out with 11 touchdowns in 2023, but only caught 55 passes for 845 yards in the process. He would disappear for whole games at a time, only to bounce back with a massive performance the next week.

Mitchell’s puzzling profile, yet impressive physical skill set are reminiscent of past splash play, medium production, maddeningly inconsistent, tantalizing upside wide receivers like George Pickens or Martavis Bryant. All three had incredible highs and low lows, similar physical profiles as big bodied receivers who were monster athletes and zero 1,000-yard collegiate seasons. Pickens’ output was impacted by injuries, and he was a much better contested catch receiver in college than Mitchell and Bryant. 

But all three players lacked the type of consistent dominance and production to make evaluations easy for draft evaluators. In Mitchell’s specific case, he’s done next to nothing after the catch for three straight years, he rarely breaks a tackle or makes a defender miss with the ball in his hands and he’s 13-of-30 in contested catch situations in his college career, per PFF. Some of that was poor ball placement by Quinn Ewers at Texas, but Mitchell also didn’t demand the volume of targets that top receivers typically do in college football, which is pretty easy to understand with the inconsistencies on his tape.

And yet…I’m pretty intrigued by a wide receiver who saw almost 20 percent of his college catches go for touchdowns, averaged over 15 yards a catch and has one drop in the past two years. I’d need to have a strong idea what kind of student of the game and what kind of football junkie I’m getting in Mitchell, but he’ll be 21 years old nearly his entire rookie season. There is a lot of room to grow and improve as a player, and the baseline skill set is already pretty good.

He’s not going to get a first round grade from me, but it’s also not inconceivable to think Mitchell could end up being a top 3 wide receiver in this draft in 2-3 years. That upside alone would have me considering selecting him if I believed in the person too.