{"id":733445,"date":"2026-02-06T12:46:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T12:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/733445\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T12:46:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T12:46:14","slug":"packers-2026-draft-will-lee-iii-scouting-report-and-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/733445\/","title":{"rendered":"Packers 2026 Draft: Will Lee III scouting report and video"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continuing our series covering the upcoming cornerbacks class, since the Green Bay Packers will almost certainly be drafting at least one player at the position in the 2026 draft, we\u2019ll be talking about Texas A&M\u2019s Will Lee III today. Previously, we\u2019ve also written scouting reports on Ohio State\u2019s Davison Igbinosun<\/a>, Washington\u2019s Tacario Davis<\/a>, Alabama\u2019s Domani Jackson<\/a> and Arkansas\u2019 Julian Neal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lee played prep football at Kirkwood High School in St. Louis, Missouri. He received his first scholarship offer to play football in December of his sophomore season, after an Iowa coach watched him play a high school basketball game with teammate Ja\u2019Mori Maclin, cousin of former NFL receiver Jeremy Maclin, who the Hawkeyes were trying to recruit to play football. As a prep, Lee played the safety and later linebacker positions on defense. Due to eligibility issues, however, Lee began his college football career at Iowa Western, a junior college powerhouse that has either been the NJCAA national champions or runners-up since the 2021 season.<\/p>\n

For what it\u2019s worth, former Packers Don Jackson and Geronimo Allison, along with Wisconsin product Andrew Van Ginkel, came from Iowa Western.<\/p>\n

Lee took a redshirt season in 2021 and was a full-time starter in 2022, a season in which he earned first-team All-American honors at the JuCo level (Lee was the only freshman defender who made the cut). After two years at the JuCo level, Lee had scholarship offers to the likes of Arkansas, Florida State, Iowa, Kansas State and Oregon State. He actually originally committed to Oregon State before opening his recruitment back up and signing with Kansas State.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, there\u2019s actually a Packers connection to the Beavers\u2019 program at the time. The cornerbacks coach at Oregon State in 2022-2023, when Lee would have been recruited by the program, was Anthony Perkins, who was a Packers\u2019 quality control coach in 2024. Perkins left Green Bay to join Anthony Campanile\u2019s staff in Jacksonville in 2025. Perkins\u2019 time at OSU also overlapped with Packers safety Kitan Oladapo, who was drafted by the team in 2024.<\/p>\n

Coming out of Iowa Western, Lee was ranked as the 37th overall junior college prospect in the nation, according to the 247Sports composite<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He spent just one season (as a starter) in Manhattan, Kansas, before transferring to Texas A&M for his final two years of college football. Technically, Lee probably could have fought for an extra year of eligibility, as the NCAA no longer has to count JuCo seasons toward a player\u2019s four years of eligibility as a result of recent lawsuits. When Lee entered the transfer portal, he was ranked as a four-star player by 247Sports and was graded as the 124th overall player in the class. At the time, he also received interest from the likes of other traditional powerhouse programs like Auburn, Florida, LSU and USC.<\/p>\n

In all three of Lee\u2019s seasons at the FBS level, he\u2019s been a full-time starting outside cornerback. In 2024, he earned second-team All-SEC honors. Since his days at Iowa Western, he has gone by the nickname \u201cThe Blanket.\u201d Lee\u2019s uncle, Darrell Lee \u2014 another Kirkwood product \u2014 was named a prep All-American and won Missouri\u2019s Gatorade Player of the Year Award in 1999. He went on to play for the Florida Gators and Dallas Cowboys.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of people who think that Lee is a press-man cornerback, and some scouts believe that he has a chance to eventually become a first-round pick in this cycle, but I don\u2019t agree with that analysis. He\u2019s a great athlete, don\u2019t get me wrong, but Lee often comes out of press looks flat-footed, which led to some wide-open shots down the sideline in 2025.<\/p>\n

I think Lee\u2019s press skills will be better shown off in the red zone, when he doesn\u2019t have the threat of having to cover a 25-plus-yard fade route, but I don\u2019t like the idea of him having to play press man coverage in the open field in the NFL, at least on Day 1.<\/p>\n

Personally, I believe Lee is better as a click-and-close cornerback, who is able to see the route develop from an off alignment and can snap to the route from depth because of his athleticism. There are times when he\u2019s able to cover drag routes from depth, which is pretty rare from an athleticism and read-and-react standpoint. That\u2019s how he wins.<\/p>\n

He plays through receivers\u2019 hands and has the athleticism to undercut routes, but he also loses at the top of routes and in contested catch situations a good bit. I actually think he plays a little smaller than the 6\u20191\u201d, 189 pounds that scouts estimate him at. I\u2019m not worried about his tackling ability, though, as he runs through tackle attempts and is pretty violent at the point of attack because of how sudden he is.<\/p>\n

Lee looks like a Day 2 cornerback to me, but I think he needs a good home. Green Bay Packers defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon has run more quarters over the last five seasons than any individual NFL team<\/a>, which means that he\u2019s putting his cornerbacks in off-coverage read-and-react situations frequently. I actually really like the Packers as a landing spot for Lee, considering his strengths and weaknesses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Continuing our series covering the upcoming cornerbacks class, since the Green Bay Packers will almost certainly be drafting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2072],"tags":[7,41,345,623,2514,2513,6,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-733445","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-green-bay-packers","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-green-bay","10":"tag-green-bay-packers","11":"tag-green-bay-packers-draft","12":"tag-greenbay","13":"tag-greenbaypackers","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-packers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116023760558563082","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}