Sports
NFL Draft Could Launch Former STMA Football Star’s Pro Career
Isaiah Weston "spun" evaluators' heads with his NFL Combine workout and gave himself a great chance at being drafted, an ESPN analyst wrote.
ALBERTVILLE, MN — Former St. Michael-Albertville High School football standout Isaiah Weston will be waiting by the phone for a call from the NFL over the next few days, as he could be selected in the 2022 NFL Draft.
Weston, an Albertville native, starred during his senior season at STMA. He had 45 catches for 1,011 yards and 11 touchdowns across 13 games to lead the Knights to a Class 5A state title in 2015, according to statistics from MN Football Hub.
That stellar senior season saw him receive offers to play at South Dakota State and Northern Iowa, where he built a reputation as a wide receiver who can stretch defenses vertically and whose “downfield ball skills can be spectacular at times,” according to his profile on NFL.com.
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Weston redshirted during his first season at Northern Iowa in 2016 and started five of 13 games in 2017, catching 22 passes for 380 yards and five touchdowns, NFL.com statistics show.
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Weston missed the entire 2018 season with a knee injury but earned second-team All-American honors and first-team conference honors after leading the Panthers in 2019 with 43 catches for 1,053 yards in 12 games, according to NFL.com’s Chad Reuter.
He also tied a Northern Iowa school record with touchdown catches in seven straight games. Weston was also the Panthers’ top receiver during the 2021 fall season, with 37 catches for 883 yards and five touchdowns, Reuter wrote.
“His productivity (at Northern Iowa) would have skyrocketed with a more accurate quarterback,” according to his NFL.com profile. “There is upside worthy of exploring but it might be as a late-round pick with an early home on the practice squad.”
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Weston is "flexible, fast and athletic,” and he has the size to play in the NFL, his profile says. He “gets the most out of his catch radius” and has the “length and lift to go up and swipe the jump ball,” but he needs to work on running routes and locating deep passes quicker, according to NFL.com.
Weston could be selected in the 2022 NFL Draft, with NFL Mock Draft Database predicting he will be chosen in the seventh round between the 208th and 229th picks. Weston was not expected to be among the 262 draft picks until only a few weeks ago, according to NFL Mock Draft Database.
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ESPN’s Jeff Legwold’s mock draft shows Weston being selected with the 100th pick in the 2022 NFL Draft. Legwold wrote that Weston “deserves a little more attention” after the former STMA star stunned evaluators with his NFL Combine workout.
“Weston didn't just turn heads with his combine workout, he spun them around as evaluators were forced to go back and look why he had six games this past season with two or fewer receptions,” Legwold wrote, explaining that Weston’s college career included a season lost to injury and two seasons disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Weston ran the 40-yard dash in 4.42 seconds; had a vertical jump of 40 inches and a broad jump of 11 feet, 3 inches; and bench-pressed 225 pounds 20 times, according to the University of Northern Iowa.
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The NFL Draft order, as of Wednesday, shows more than half of the league's teams are scheduled to make selections between the 208th and 229th picks, including the Cincinnati Bengals, Green Bay Packers and Cleveland Browns.
All three of those teams met with Weston virtually earlier in April as he tries to break into the big league, SBNation’s Cincy Jungle reported.
The 2022 NFL Draft runs from Thursday-Saturday in Las Vegas. Rounds 4-7 will start at 11 a.m. Central Time on Saturday. Weston could know his future in the NFL by Saturday night.
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