Jordyn Tyson is an elite separator who can win from both the boundary and the slot thanks to his field awareness, route nuance, expansive route tree, and fluid movement skills.

​

Tyson was a 3-star recruit and the 131st-ranked WR in the 2022 recruiting class, choosing Colorado over Tulsa. Despite an unimpressive recruiting pedigree, Tyson saw the field in 9 games as a true freshman, scoring a TD in the season opener on his way to a team-best 470 yards and 5 TDs before a season-ending torn ACL. Tyson left Colorado, ostensibly in no small part due to Deion Sanders' arrival and subsequent overhaul of the roster. This, in confluence with his knee injury, led him to transfer to Arizona State where he sat out the 2023 season. Tyson burst back onto the scene in 2024 with 75 catches, 1101 receiving yards, and 10 TDs before missing ASU's College Football Playoff appearance with a collarbone injury. Tyson earned All-Big 12 First Team honors in both 2024 and 2025 despite battling various injuries. 

​

Tyson is a player who should be expected to walk into the NFL and immediately contribute as a high-volume target thanks to his ability to destroy both man and zone coverage on a variety of routes from any alignment. IQ is the calling card of Tyson's route running; he is incredibly smart when it comes to attacking leverage, and this, combined with his fluidity, makes him tough to cover at the top of routes. His spatial IQ, keen zone recognition, and timing also allow him to be a QB's best friend vs zone coverage. Tyson is a fairly twitchy player whose burst makes him a serious threat to beat soft press and win vertically. He is capable of running a full route tree and running it well, and has the traits necessary to do so consistently at the next level from any alignment.

​

What sets Tyson apart from most pure route-running WRs is his ability to win at the catch point. Not only has Tyson improved his hands, having gone from 7 drops in 2024 to 1 drop in 2025, but he's also always displayed great ball skills in contested situations, winning more than half of his career opportunities. Notably, Tyson has a long 6'2 frame, but he often plays even bigger than that, displaying awesome leaping ability and fearlessness at the catch point. The same body control that makes him such a dominant separator also helps him out when he needs to adjust to balls that are poorly placed/underthrown, or in instances where there isn't any separation and he simply needs to make a play. 

​

The most obvious concern with Tyson is his growing list of injuries. The torn ACL in his freshman year was likely benign; it hasn't been an issue lately, and he has only gotten better since then. The real concern seems to be with his overall durability, given he's tapered off toward the end of each of the last two seasons due to injury. Draft Combine medicals will be important for him, though some teams may not be willing to take a chance on a player who has yet to finish a season strong.

​

Tyson's other main concern is his play strength and ability to win at the LOS vs larger, longer NFL cornerbacks. We saw this in his limited reps vs Mississippi State CB Kelley Jones, who smothered him in press and forced an incompletion on 3rd and short, as well as on a fade where Tyson failed to win at the LOS or win vertically. This summarizes the three-fold concern for Tyson playing on the boundary right away in the NFL: his play strength, average/above average vertical speed, and his hand technique at the LOS may create a learning curve that relegates him to the slot for a lot of his early reps. 

​

I liken Jordyn Tyson to Jaxon Smith-Njigba as much for their question marks as for their strengths. Like Smith-Njigba, Tyson's stock has tapered due to questions over whether or not he could succeed against physical boundary CBs in the NFL. I, personally, compared JSN to Justin Jefferson because I believe his traits were fully translatable to the boundary in the NFL (Jefferson was a slot WR in college), and I consider Jordyn Tyson to be cut from the same cloth. Ultimately, Tyson has the potential to be a dominant WR1 who wins in every way imaginable, whether from the outside or slot, vs zone or man, or at the short, intermediate, or deep level, much like we have seen with Smith-Njigba in 2025. 

​

Grade: mid 1st round

Archetype: 3-Level Inside-Out Separator

High-End Pro Comparison: Jaxon Smith-Njigba

Low-End Pro Comparison: Michael Gallup