Oakland Raiders 2019 NFL Draft Crush: Noah Fant

Cons

It would be unfair if I were just pointing out the good in Fant’s game without looking at the areas of his game that still need improvement. The first being the nuance of his route running because despite being able to run a variety of routes he isn’t particularly fluid. Sometimes taking too many steps to decelerate his movement and it can affect the separating he’s created initially. That’s not unexpected given his size but he if could see and guy like Antonio Brown in practice every day and learn from him about route running techniques that would great.

We’ve already touched on him not being an elite blocker, and much of that comes from him not being very strong with his hands and lower half. If he wants to move from an average to a good blocker this along with continued technique refinement is critical.

Lastly, and probably the biggest issue with Fant is the tendency to drop the easy passes despite catching the difficult ones. According to Pro Football Focus, Fant had a 9.3% drop rate in 2018 which broke down to 4 total drops on 43 catchable passes. In 2017 he had 7 dropped passes on 55 targets (unknown if all were catchable). This is something that could turn someone like Gruden even redder than he already is. Even though he can make up for it with great plays, the simple ones are still as important, and it is something Fant needs to clean up.