Titans hope Corey Davis is the draft’s best WR. Will small-school talent translate?

Corey Davis was one of the most productive wideouts in college history. The question now is whether his “Tuesday Night MACtion” translates to NFL Sundays.

The Titans bet big on the 6’3 wideout after investing the fifth pick of the 2017 NFL Draft on the WMU Bronco.

In his final three years at Western Michigan, he averaged 88 receptions, 1,446 yards and 15 touchdowns per season. No player in the history of the Mid-American Conference — not even the great Antonio Brown, who attended Central Michigan — has come within 1,000 yards of Davis’ career production.

Davis was one of the nation’s most dynamic receivers last fall, but his biggest games came against opponents not exactly known for their defense. He only had five games with 100-plus receiving yards, versus North Carolina Central, Northern Illinois, Ball State, Buffalo, and Ohio.

So which player is Tennessee getting? The one who roasted Ball State for 272 yards and three touchdowns? Or the one Kent State held to one reception a week later?

NFL teams might have had a better sense if they’d seen him perform in person at the NFL Combine, but he didn’t participate in any drills. Instead, Davis was recovering from surgery in January to fix torn ligaments in his ankle, adding to the sense of mystery that floats around his selection.

You look at the numbers, where one can get a better idea of Davis’ skill by weeding out his MAC opponents from the Power 5 teams the Broncos played the last three seasons. Coincidentally, all six came from the Big Ten.

Davis was solid against Big Ten competition, but his gaudy statistics take a hit against better competition. If you extrapolate his Power 5 production to a 12-game season, you’d get 74 receptions for 964 yards and six touchdowns, but that doesn’t include the non-conference cupcakes he’d face as part of Ohio State or Michigan’s offense.

Clip his Big Ten projection down to eight games and add his average MAC performance from 2016 — 7-plus catches and 115 yards per game — and you get an adjusted stat line that looks like 79 receptions, 1,110 receiving yards (13.9 yards per catch), and 10 touchdowns.

For comparison, those numbers would have trailed only Northwestern’s Austin Carr in the Big Ten. It’s safe to say Davis would have been a first-team all-conference pick, no matter where he played his college ball in 2016.

What’s more, Davis also suffered from being his team’s primary weapon on offense, which meant any of the Big Ten teams he faced, barring perhaps Purdue in 2014, were focused on stopping him. He’ll have less pressure to be the sole or main offensive threat on his team in the NFL, especially on a team with Marcus Mariota, Derrick Henry, and DeMarco Murray.

Obviously, Davis has his warts. He never ran for NFL teams, leaving scouts guessing about how he stacks up physically against the rest of the wideouts in his class. He dropped a lot of passes, raising issues of focus, and his blocking along the sideline is still relatively untested.

A bum ankle kept him from working out with NFL teams. The rangy receiver had two ligaments repaired back in January, and the rehabilitation process has been arduous, preventing him from showcasing his talent to league executives and scouts.

Though he’s on the road to recovery, he admitted that he’s not 100 percent yet.

Still, production can’t be overlooked, and Davis is the ultimate case study in that regard. Coming from the MAC, he has a transition ahead, but there is precedent. Within the conference, there was Brown, Randy Moss, and Greg Jennings, a former Western Michigan wide receiver selected by Green Bay in 2006 in the second round.

Davis has that lineage and more. His ability to separate from defensive backs deep into routes is the kind of skill coaches can’t teach. He was a regular on highlight reels thanks to catches like these:

And that’s something that was never going to show up in his Combine numbers. That’s why, drops and all, he may be the draft’s best receiver.