Becoming the best of the best doesn't happen by chance.

Though that sounds like a corny inspirational quote from a tear-off calendar, I mean it. People who are good at their jobs -- people who have found success in something they do -- usually worked their way to become good at that something. Sure, sure -- things are inherited, I get it. But the majority of folks who are brilliant at what they do got there gradually through work, not by chance.

That includes athletes. Specifically, NFL players. Specifically, NFL wide receivers.

It's rare to find a successful professional wideout who produced little at the college level. Impossible, even. And that tells us something important: for a receiver to be good in the future, he has to also be good in the past.

Defining Success

Dez Bryant, I used his last healthy season), here's a look at the 35 wide receiver sample's averages in major college production categories:

Like I said, becoming the best of the best doesn't happen by chance. Successful NFL wide receivers were -- you guessed it -- really good at producing at the college level.

Among the 35-player sample, there were two players -- A.J. Green and Eric Decker -- who played fewer than 11 games in their final season. (I mentioned Dez already, who played just three games.) Decker ended up having the lowest target market share (19.74%) as a result, but the numbers for the two of them didn't skew the larger sample all that dramatically.

Aside from Decker, the lowest target market share of the bunch came from Kenny Stills, who's arguably the worst wide receiver analyzed in the sample. His share was 21.54% during his last season at Oklahoma. And only Marvin Jones (OK, maybe he's the worst wideout of the crew -- I promise the sample includes studs) saw a touchdown market share below 25.00%.

Players of Concern

Let's use this information and see what it means for the 2017 class, looking at players who have concerning production profiles.

(Players selected to analyze were taken from WalterFootball.com's top wide receiver prospects.)

Usage Concerns

It's no shock that Speedy Noil has the lowest reception market share (percent of completions that went to a receiver) of the 43 incoming wide receivers analyzed, as he played just 7 games. But he also declared early for the draft after a season of just 21 catches (2.33 per game) and could easily go undrafted.

JuJu Smith-Schuster is an interesting prospect given his production during the 2015 season -- his Sophomore year -- was a lot stronger than his Junior year. Things changed within the team's offense, but there are certainly some red flags when you consider his reception market share went from 28.80% to 23.03% in 2015 to 2016.

Remember, the average successful wide receiver in our sample had a reception market share of 31.93% during their final season. And the lowest mark, 20.53%, was barely below Smith-Schuster's 2016 share.

Receiving Production Concerns

This is the second chart in a row where we see Damore'ea Stringfellow, and while he's got an elite name, there are definitely questions surrounding his potential to be an elite NFL wide receiver.

For reference, no player in our sample saw a receiving yardage market share total below 21%, meaning every guy in the chart above would be breaking some sort of mold to be a successful NFL wideout. That, again, includes Stringfellow, who could be drafted as early as the second day if a team likes his size enough, or if he kills the NFL Combine.

Scoring Concerns

A player everyone is talking about is Mike Williams, who, among this year's draft class, is probably best at making contested catches. That seems like it would translate to scoring, but that wasn't exactly the case in 2016, as he scored 26.19% of Clemson's passing touchdowns (despite finding the end zone 11 times).

I can't reiterate enough that this doesn't mean Williams is destined to fail at the NFL level. Within the successful wide receiver sample, though, only 3 of the 35 wideouts saw a touchdown market share as low as Williams', and one of those players was Randall Cobb, who wasn't close to a traditional pass-catcher in college.

Fitting the Mold

If we look strictly at the reception, receiving yard, and touchdown market share averages from our successful NFL wide receiver sample, only two wideouts actually make it through the filter.

One of these is not like the other.

Corey Davis hits on every market share metric -- he's someone who's been praised by plenty of draft analysts during this pre-draft process, and he's projected to be one of the best wideouts in the class. This just confirms that he's a really good prospect.

Jalen Robinette is not Corey Davis. He played in a run-heavy offense at Air Force that featured a ton of play-action passes, which definitely helped his numbers. But he's also built like a top receiver with great size -- a good showing at the NFL Combine could go a long way.

No one's saying he'll be a stud, but he's also a really fun and intriguing prospect.

If we were to be a little more liberal with the parameters -- subtracting 3% from each average -- here's a look at a few more guys who fit the market share molds.

To anyone who's dug deep into this year's wide receiver class, these names should be a bit surprising. But this tells just part of the story -- we still have the NFL Combine next week.