McShay: Barden 'best small-school WR'

After playing on Saturdays for the past four years, Cal Poly wide receiver Ramses Barden will likely be making the jump to Sundays this fall, according to one high-profile NFL Draft analyst.

In an e-mail sent Thursday to the Mustang Daily, ESPN NFL and college football analyst Todd McShay praised and critiqued Barden, who completed his Cal Poly career Nov. 29.

“I think he should come off the board around the 3rd/4th-round range,” McShay wrote. “In my opinion, he’s the best small-school WR prospect in the senior class.”

McShay, the director of college football analysis for Scouts Inc., has evaluated NFL Draft prospects since 1998.

According to ESPN, for whom McShay now is a College Football Insider, “numerous NFL teams have relied on his reports.”

He called the 6-foot-6, 227-pound Barden a “big, physical receiver with good athleticism for his size,” but one who “needs to show the ability to separate from coverage during drills at an all-star game versus better competition.”

Barden, who’ll play in the East-West Shrine Game on Jan. 17 on ESPN2, set Cal Poly career marks for catches (206), receiving yards (4,203) and touchdowns (50), broke Larry Fitzgerald’s all-time NCAA record for consecutive games with a touchdown catch (20) and tied Randy Moss’ all-time Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) standard of single-season consecutive games with a touchdown catch (11).

The Altadena native finished fourth in the voting last week for the Walter Payton Award, given to the FCS’ best offensive player, and will likely be invited to the scouting combine in Indianapolis from Feb. 18-24.

The combine, known as something of an annual NFL job fair, puts players’ physical and mental talents to test in a series of drills that help scouts from all 32 NFL teams evaluate their skill level.

The three most crucial factors for Barden at the combine, McShay added, will be running the 40-yard dash in the 4.5-second range, “running competitive times (for his size) in the shuttle and catching the ball crisply during the ‘gauntlet’ drill” because “his hands are only mediocre” and he “lets too many balls get into his pads.”

The draft’s first two rounds are April 26, with the final five April 27.

Three Cal Poly products have been chosen in the draft since 2005: linebacker Jordan Beck (in 2005’s third round), defensive end Chris Gocong (2006’s third round) and defensive back Courtney Brown (2007’s seventh round).

Mustangs head coach Rich Ellerson said last week he thought Barden could be a first-day choice, and Newsday reported Nov. 3 that an NFL executive listed Barden as one of five “under-the-radar” prospects who could go in the first two rounds.

– Scott Silvey contributed to this report.