2021 NFL Draft: Terrace Marshall Jr., the other LSU wide receiver

When LSU has its Pro Day on March 31, all eyes will be on wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase. Widely accepted as the 2021 NFL Draft “WR1”, scouts and media alike will be watching every bead of sweat on Chase’s body, attempting to scrutinize if he has lost a step after opting out of the 2020 season. The highest-ranking LSU player in this year’s draft, most scouts consider it a foregone conclusion that Chase will be a Pro Bowl receiver before his rookie contract expires, assuming he gets drafted to a team with even a mildly competent quarterback.

It’s a difficult narrative to argue against: After all, look at Chase’s production in 2019, the season Joe Burrow unexpectedly lifted a middling LSU offense above his shoulders and chucked it into the history books. Chase was the team’s most productive receiver, scoring 20 touchdowns on 1,780 receiving yards, both of which ranked number one in the SEC and the entire NCAA, respectively.

It was even a single-season record for LSU, a team that has been home to plenty of talented receivers in the past. Although nominally in a foot race with two Alabama receivers to be the first pass-catcher off the board, it is generally understood that Chase is the most NFL-ready receiver available this spring, and therefore the most coveted by the league.

Cue the dramatic music: But what if I told you, like Morpheus in The Matrix, that your eyes were deceiving you? What if someone told you that in five years, Chase will be considered just the second-best receiver to be drafted this spring?

Would you believe me if I told you that the only receiver from the 2021 NFL Draft people will still be gushing over in a few years will be LSU receiver Terrace Marshall Jr. and that he will have been to at least two Pro Bowls by the end of 2025 (assuming he doesn’t miss consecutive seasons due to injuries or other acts of God, unbeknownst at time of publication)?

Note: It turns out Morpheus never actually said the line “what if I told you…” in The Matrix. Apparently, this is an example of The Mandela Effect, the curious peculiarity where a large section of the population remembers something differently than it actually occurred.

It’s possible this quote has been misremembered because of the ubiquity of the Morpheus “what if told you…” meme that has made the rounds on the internet for the last few years. But this is just one theory. This has nothing to do with LSU wide receiver Terrace Marshall Jr. or the 2021 NFL Draft, but I found it interesting. And now you know.

In this article, we’ll discuss the OTHER wide receiver from LSU and go over his 2019 and 2020 campaigns: How he showed consistent improvement season to season and how this rise in production is translatable to the NFL. We’ll discuss Marshall’s path to the NFL and how he went from a prolific high school receiver in northern Louisiana to a field-stretching scorcher in Baton Rouge.

Next, we’ll go over the things Marshall does well on the field and what things he’ll need to improve upon once in the league. Finally, we’ll discuss the three traits that signal Marshall will be a Pro-Bowler in the near future and why NFL teams should really consider him a top-three receiver in the 2021 NFL Draft.