\n Caleb Downs, S, Ohio State<\/p>\n
Safeties are not considered highly-valued prospects in the NFL draft. Since 2000, there have only been four taken with a top 10 pick: Roy Williams (eighth in 2002), Sean Taylor (fifth in 2004), Eric Berry (fifth in 2010) and Jamal Adams (sixth in 2017).<\/p>\n
That’s not to say that safeties aren’t valuable; Taylor, Berry and Adams were all considered among the best in the league for a time and helped elevate their defense’s potential. But teams generally use those top picks on positions considered to be more impactful like left tackle, quarterback, defensive end and cornerback.<\/p>\n
However, there are times when a prospect is too good to pass on, and Downs is considered by many to be one of the few safeties in the past 25 years who deserves to be one of the first players taken off the board.<\/p>\n
“Downs is a difference-maker in the mold of Derwin James Jr. or Kyle Hamilton who can dictate what an offense is able to do but also be a matchup problem in multiple alignments,” wrote ESPN’s Miller, who has Downs going to the Commanders at No. 7 in his most recent mock draft.<\/p>\n
Versatility is a key component to Downs’ skill set, and there’s not much the two-time Big Ten Defensive Back of the Year cannot do. In the three seasons of his college career, he’s lined up at multiple spots on Alabama and Ohio State’s defense, from traditional free safety (799 snaps) to in the box (682 snaps) and even close to the line of scrimmage (58 snaps).<\/p>\n
And over the last three seasons, it’s been hard to find a safety — or defensive player, for that matter — who has been more consistent than Downs. According to Pro Football Focus, he was the only safety with grades of at least an 80 in overall defense (83.9), run defense (83), tackling (82.2) and coverage (87). In fact, he never graded lower than a 78 in any of those categories during his college career.<\/p>\n
As Commanders analyst Logan Paulsen said, Downs is a “‘football-playing Johnny’ in the purest sense of the word.”<\/p>\n
“As a nickel, he will come down and absolutely obliterate you on the tackle,” Paulsen said in an episode of the team’s “Drive to the Draft” podcast. “Caleb Downs will come knock your face off. He knows how to blitz; he can fit runs; he stays incredibly square in man coverage. He plays with great strength … To me, he feels like the perfect buffalo nickel hybrid linebacker, and I think about all the issues Washington’s had with nickel players here. I would die if that dude came here.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caleb Downs, S, Ohio State Safeties are not considered highly-valued prospects in the NFL draft. Since 2000, there…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":740845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2069],"tags":[427,7,1806,106713,6,1805,855,111,2480],"class_list":{"0":"post-740844","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-commanders","8":"tag-commanders","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-football-news","11":"tag-mock-monday","12":"tag-nfl","13":"tag-subsection-news","14":"tag-washington","15":"tag-washington-commanders","16":"tag-washingtoncommanders"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116042088007161715","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740844","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=740844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/740845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}