Thor Nystrom's 2025 NFL Draft profile series continues, as we visit the campus of Missouri to break down the Luther Burden Scouting Report:

Luther Burden III Profile

  • Missouri | 6-foot-0, 206 pounds
  • Comp: Percy Harvin

Luther III, one of 10 kids in the Burden family, intended to start playing football at 8 years old. There was a complication. His father, Luther Sr., sat him down and explained that he could join the team, but because the family did not own a car, Luther III would have to walk to practices and walk back home afterward.

Luther Sr. explained that he was committed to making those walks with Luther III—but that Luther III had to know what he was signing up for—that he was going to be exhausted after practice and that they’d still have to walk home.

Luther III agreed. On the first day of practices, Luther Sr. returned home from work, and he and his son walked to the field. Afterwards, they walked home. It was the first time, and the last time, that Luther Jr. and his son made that walk.

The next day, Luther Jr. got a phone call. It was the coach of the team. “[The coach said], ‘Mr. Burden, you don’t have to pick him up. You don’t have to bring him, either. We’ll pick him up,'” Burden Jr. said. The coaches had found the team’s star.

The hype built year by year. By high school, Burden III was doggedly pursued by every major program in America. He was MaxPreps' National Player of the Year as a senior and was the No. 6 overall recruit in the 2022 247Sports Composite.

At his college announcement ceremony, Burden III threw Alabama and Georgia hats to the floor and put on the Missouri one, announcing to the world he was staying home. Burden became the fourth five-star recruit to sign with the Tigers in the past 20 years, joining Dorial Green-Beckham, Terry Beckner Jr., and Blaine Gabbert.

Burden started as a true freshman in 2022 and got plenty of work on schemed touches. The 45-375-6 receiving line he posted that year doesn’t look like much, but Missouri’s putrid passing offense generated only 2,783 total passing yards in 13 games that year.

Burden finished No. 2 on the team in catches, and had double the TD catches of the next-highest player. Burden also had 88 rushing yards and two additional TDs over 18 carries.

Missouri improved from 6-7 to 11-2 in 2023, the year of Burden’s coming-out party. He rung up an 86-1212-9 receiving line, at one point stringing together five-consecutive 100-plus yard games. Heading into his junior campaign, Burden was a consensus too-early top-10 NFL Draft pick.

But Missouri’s offense strangely sagged in 2024, generating only 2,926 total passing yards despite most of their key contributors returning. Burden led the team with 61 catches, but he only averaged 56.3 YPG receiving – more than 10 less than team-leader WR Theo Wease (68.0).

Burden opted out of the bowl game and declared for the 2025 NFL draft following the regular season. Considered a near-lock to go in the top-10 over the summer, Burden’s stock has hit some turbulence in the time since.

In a down receiver class, will we still hear Burden’s name called in the top half of the first round? Or is it possible that Burden’s stock has been depressed enough by the 2024 dip that he could slip out of Round 1 altogether?

NFL Draft Scouting Report - Luther Burden III

Let’s start out with the million-dollar dichotomy of Burden’s evaluation: He’s plugged-into-a-socket electric with the ball in his hands. But will his touches have to be manufactured close to the line of scrimmage in the NFL, or is there dormant potential waiting to be untapped that could lead to him generating his own opportunities without the ball?

Missouri went to great lengths to get the ball in Burden’s hands, shifting him around the formation and generating quick-look ball shuttles. With the ball in his hands, Burden looks like a star running back—he’s extremely sudden, with a NAS acceleration button.

The issue is getting the ball into his hands. The Tigers would use the boundary receiver on Burden’s side to pick/rub Burden’s man, or out on dummy clear-out patterns to create space for Burden.

Mizzou would also line up Burden as a single-back RB in four-WR sets (five including him) and spray the heavy-side WRs down the field to open space to dump the ball to Burden leaking out of the backfield.

These various “clear-out” concepts were designed to get Burden into situations where he had the ball in his hands with one tackle to break for an opportunity at an explosive play. He’s always a threat to do so because of his skill with the ball in his hands.

Just don’t draft Burden expecting that he’s going to create throwing windows for his quarterback—those will need to be generated for him. Over his three-year career, Burden had 192 catches—84 of them came behind the line of scrimmage (43.7%!). By contrast, Burden had only 48 catches 10-plus air yards down the field (25%). His career aDOT was 15th-percentile.

Almost all of Burden’s catches 20-plus yards downfield in college were against single-high defenses where the concept was designed to yank that safety away from Burden. Generally, Burden would run by his one-on-one coverage assignment.

Burden’s downfield ball-tracking comes and goes—I saw him make some slick adjustments on balls to secure a catch. I also saw him misjudge or lose a couple of balls that landed just out of his reach.

What I wanted to see more of was salesmanship. There was an instant of that in his tape against Boston College last season—Missouri clears out Burden’s side of the field, leaving him in one-on-one coverage on one half of the field. This was the goal of Missouri’s offense the past two years.

Burden’s defender is playing downhill on him, and he gets fooled—Burden mimes a quick-out, which BC had seen earlier. The defender bites down hard, and Burden turns on the jets upfield for a non-contested touchdown. I needed to see more of that kind of thing.

The urgency that you see in Burden’s movement with the ball isn’t there in his route-running—it’s a more straightforward affair. For this reason, Missouri didn’t stretch him, and instead tried to leverage what he was good at. When you saw defenses go into a drop zone, it was nearly automatic that Burden would sit within five yards of the line of scrimmage for a free completion and catch-and-run opportunity.

Unlike some manufactured-touch slot receivers we’ve seen come out in recent years, Burden actually has pretty solid ball skills. He has reliable hands. And when you can lead him into space, there is no transition between receiver and runner. Over the past two seasons, Burden posted stellar drop rates south of 5%.

Burden is very much like Percy Harvin in that his north/south explosion not only chews up yards quickly, but it converts into an element of power that gives him a little tackle-breaking juice. When Burden gets chugging, he’ll bounce off off-angle attempts from defensive backs.

Burden’s 4.41 forty at the NFL Combine was 95th-percentile, and his 10-yard split of 1.54 was 90th-percentil—he has house-call, angle-erasing speed with green grass in front of him. 

What Luther Burden is not is an NFL WR1. He needs a creative offensive staff to scheme him looks, and he needs to be playing around legitimate boundary threats to open up the spacing he needs to do serious damage underneath.

Burden profiles as a flammable third banana for an elite passing offense. If your boundary receivers are good enough to demand double-high safety looks for four quarters, Burden is going to punish defenses for the short and intermediate spacing that is naturally going to be there.

Burden’s stock is down from the preseason, when he was considered a legitimate contender for WR1 honors in this class. That’s the bad news. The good news is that falling to late-Round 1 would increase the odds he gets to an offense where his game could flourish, as opposed to being ganged-up on by defenses as a marked-man WR1 for a poor offense, as he was in 2024 at Missouri.

More 2025 NFL Draft Prospect Profiles:

Quarterback

Running Back

Wide Receiver