
Some unfortunate news just came out about one of the top wide receiver prospects in the 2027 NFL Draft , KJ Duff. With that in mind, we’re going to be taking a look at the injury report and how it impacts his NFL draft ranking.
Sources: Rutgers star wide receiver KJ Duff underwent season-ending high-ankle surgery this week. He’ll miss the remainder of the year. He’s expected to resume full football activities in January. pic.twitter.com/At0SmvdHcU
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) November 11, 2026
Now, as someone who is typically skeptical of these bigger receivers, I was a bit worried about Duff early on. To say Duff is a bigger receiver is selling him short. Duff comes in at a ridiculous 6’6″, 225 lbs.
After watching the tape on Duff, I ended up much higher on him than I thought I would be. Not only can Duff dominate at the catch point, but I thought his movement skills were really impressive for his size.
Now, prior to this news, Duff ranked 38th overall on the TWSN NFL Mock Draft Simulator public big board. However, on the TWSN section, Duff was all the way up at 23. While we don’t know a ton of details just yet, based on the report linked above, to me this reads as a slight nudge down, with a bit of murky water rather than some kind of catastrophic injury.
At this point, Duff has proven himself to me, and Rutgers was never going to play in the college football playoffs.
With that in mind, Duff is going to drop slightly below Ryan Coleman-Williams in the TWSN rankings, but now 28th overall. As for the public board, Duff is already a bit lower, so we’ll wait to see how mock drafts react to this news.
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