Over the past two months of looking at NFL draft models and and ratings from the smartest minds in football, I’ve been stuck on a little-asked question that seems blisteringly obvious to me.

Why is Maryland’s Tai Felton projected so low?

NFL executives and scouts like receivers who are fast and have good hands, who have shown productivity and competitiveness in college. They want someone with work ethic as unshakeable as their integrity.

In other words, every team should want guys like Felton.

In a Zoom call, I asked Felton what he would need to do to boost his draft stock: “I’ve been wondering that, too,” he said, scratching his chin.

There are times when Felton, who turned 22 in March, feels invisible — or at least that the people who control his destiny in the NFL draft cannot fully appreciate the potential they’re seeing. Ironically, loyalty to the University of Maryland might be his biggest fault.

In the 2023-24 offseason, several schools lined up name, image and likeness offers to entice Felton to transfer. With quarterback Taulia Tagovailoa out of eligibility, there was good reason for Felton to seek a more successful school with a proven passer to make him look his best going into his senior season. But that’s not how he’s wired.

“When a lot of schools backed off me, Locks stayed loyal to me and Maryland was the school that took me,” he said. “For me, it was about finishing what I started.”

Felton’s production rated among the best in the country, despite the Terps’ instability at the top in a 4-8 season. It feels like a mystery, then, how a receiver who comes from the same program that produced Stefon Diggs and D.J. Moore, who led the Big Ten in yards (1,124) and receptions (96) despite underwhelming quarterback play, and who caught at least five passes in 11 of his 12 games last season, can be entering draft week with so little buzz.

It may be that the Terps, who consistently sit in the stage wings of the Big Ten, weren’t watched or noticed enough to provide a big platform for Felton, who has never cared much for hype. On the football field, that’s a benefit. In the dog-and-pony show of draft stock, it comes at a cost.

Felton is 18th on Pro Football Focus’ rankings of receivers and 21st on ESPN’s. Most major draft projections have him as a third-day prospect. The NFL intelligentsia puts a ceiling on Felton’s upside based on his size, 6-foot-1 and 183 pounds. According to PFF, Felton “likely lacks the true difference-making qualities needed to be more than a late-round flier and depth receiver in the NFL.”

When the Terps standout ran drills at the NFL combine in Indianapolis in February, including a 4.37-second 40-yard dash (sixth fastest among WRs), the consistent response he got from the scouts he talked to was surprise.

“They didn’t know how athletic I was,” Felton said. “I was juiced up to show them how I’ve been training.”

For Tony Santos, the trainer Felton has worked with since high school, trying to change the perception of the receiver feels like an impossible task. Santos, who has worked with NFL and NBA athletes, sometimes wonders, What else does this kid need to do?

“It’s definitely frustrating sometimes, and hopefully the combine put him on the map and opened people’s eyes,” he said. “But sometimes it seems like you have to come from a big football school in the SEC to have a chance to be one of those high draft picks. But, with Tai, he loves contact, he’s a hard runner. Anytime you turn on the film, he’s doing all the things that people say he can’t do.”

“I’m a three-level receiver, on anything from hitches and slants to big plays. I feel like I’m a guy who can take the top off a defense.”

Tai Felton

Felton’s career could have branched out in very different ways, perhaps presenting easier paths to the acclaim and hype that he’s struggled to generate in the draft process. His sense of loyalty — an increasingly diminishing value in big-time college sports — has probably hurt his stock.

As a junior at Stone Bridge High in Virginia, Felton was a touted prospect who had nearly two dozen scholarship offers. Coaches whispered sweet nothings about his potential and future stardom at their schools. But almost all the attention evaporated in 2019 when Felton tore his ACL.

Maryland’s Mike Locksley never stopped, though, and never pulled the scholarship offer that Felton wound up accepting during the COVID-impacted 2020 season. The other schools might have stuck around if they had seen what Santos saw as Felton worked to rehab his ACL to get stronger than ever before. Santos picked him up three times a week to head to his clinic, and they would stretch physical therapy sessions to 2 1/2 to three hours at a time.

“The biggest thing that sets him apart is that, every single time I picked him up, he was always excited,” Santos said. “Even when he was going through rehab and he was in pain, it was swollen — he always pushed through and always wanted to do more. The other kids I worked with, they get fatigued, they’ll do one or two days and move on. Tai never missed a day.”

But somehow that doesn’t seem to be the biggest talking point about his draft stock. It felt like a more significant setback to Felton, for example, when he dropped nearly 10 pounds from his Senior Bowl weight (192) to his combine weigh-in: “I gotta get more meals in, for sure,” he said.

But how much does that matter when it comes to balling out? If you can play, you can play. Felton cites inspiration from Calvin Ridley (6-foot-1, 190 pounds), Tank Dell (5-10, 165 pounds) and Tyler Lockett (5-foot-10, 178 pounds) to show you don’t need to be a certain size to be a versatile receiver.

In his own words, this is how Felton would describe himself to NFL teams: “I’m a three-level receiver, on anything from hitches and slants to big plays. I feel like I’m a guy who can take the top off a defense. I have a love for special teams, and I’m willing to go run down there. Some receivers don’t do that, but if they need me to be a gunner, I’ll do whatever to help the team win.”

Added Felton: “I’m just a football player. I’m just gonna play football.”

The production matches up. The workouts match up. The projections don’t.

Ultimately, it won’t be about which round Felton is drafted in, but where he goes and what he does there. He’s gotten a chance to connect with other Terps who have made the same leap and found success, including Torrey Smith, Jermaine Lewis and Diggs. He’s working on learning NFL defensive back tendencies and route concepts that he’ll need to know at the next level, because one thing Felton doesn’t do is stop working.

Even if he can’t convince a team he is better than his draft grade before this weekend, he believes his time his coming. Given the track record, it is hard to doubt him.

“At end of the day,” he said, “what I do on the field is gonna outweigh everything.”