NFL Draft Exit Survey -- Part I
What did the 2024 draft teach us? What were the best value picks? What about the worst value? Who will make the most immediate impact?
The 2024 draft is officially in the books. Time to get started on the class of 2025. Okay, sure, we’ll hang with this group for a little while longer. This is The Read Optional’s 2024 Exit Survey. I’m answering questions on the the best player-to-scheme fits, the best value picks in each round, any broader takeaways we can take away, the reaches, the surprising picks, the steals and everything in-between.
I’ll wrap this series up with a mailbag section. So if you have any questions on this class, reply to this email or drop a question in the comments section below.
Let’s go.
What’s the biggest macro takeaway?
It’s time to stop talking about slot corners as being any less valuable than those that play on the perimeter. Sure, the top three guys selected in the class are – largely – outside defenders, but by my back-of-the-notebook accounting, seven slot/slot-safety hybrids were selected in the second round compared to one perimeter corner. In the third round, it was one slot defender to three perimeter corners.
Teams voted with their picks. They preferred to snag those inside guys over the outside projects early on Day Two, before swooping for maybe-possibly starter-grade outside corners in the third round.
Playing corner is damn near impossible. Playing in the slot is impossible. It is football’s most caffeinated position. Playing inside, or in the slot, gives a receiver more space to operate, and more space for the defender to constrict. It forces the DB to navigate through traffic, without having the convenience of using the sideline as an extra defender. Capping the slot is difficult at the best of times. There are more route combinations available inside, and they’re higher percentage throws. That’s why offenses are more consistently planting their best playmaker in the most valuable slot – and why defenses are responding by putting a premium on DBs who can play inside or outside, or moving their most valuable corner into the slot on a gameplan to gameplan basis.
Think about this: Justin Jefferson lined up in the slot on a third of his snaps last season, which doesn’t account for stacks or tight, condensed formations where he is still charted as playing ‘on the outside’. By the same measurement, Ceedee Lamb played 58% of his snaps in the ‘slot’; AJ Keenan Allen was inside on 57% of his snaps; Chris Olave 39%; Tyreek Hill 37%; Stefon Diggs 36%; AJ Brown 27%.
Those ‘locked’ coverages I’ve waffled on about, are about trying to pinch the best of both worlds: locking onto the slot and simplifying the assignment for the inside corner while zoning up on the outside.
It is hard to play as a pure, press-and-trail boundary spin-in and snap-out these days. Offenses are too good. They’re too sophisticated at using motion and shifts to create matchups, to drag one corner into a spot they’re less comfortable. They weaponize a defenses tendencies, against themselves. They figure out how to use a team’s coverage checks to draw the boundary guy into the uncomfortable terrain inside; or they pack the formation, tightening the split of receivers and turning a boundary guy into a pseudo slot — or else the defense vacates a corridor in the middle of the field. Condensed formations are in. Attacking space by first tightening the formation and then daring a pure perimeter guy to shift his, loosen his hips, and break out into space it the meta.
The era of banking on a guy who plays only vertically, using the sideline as an extra defender, is fading away. Three way go — in, out, flip-and-turn — corners are a must. If you’re fortunate to land one who can also play as a classic press-and-trail or press-man corner, you’ve been handed the ticket to the Chocolate Factory. But we only have one of those right now: Sauce Gardner. (Two, at a push, if you’re a Patrick Surtain super-fan.)
Kyle Hamilton have shown The Way in recent drafts. Hamilton was a first round pick because of his perceived versatility; Branch slipped to the second, and was immediately one of the top slot corners in the league. Both have played the bulk of their snaps in the slot at the pro level. If you can even find a league-average player at that position, it’s immensely valuable. If you can find a plus one, it’s the holy grail.
Teams still bet on Nate Wiggins (30th overall, Ravens), Terrion Arnold (24th overall, Lions), and Quinyon Mitchell, (22nd overall, Eagles) in the first round ahead of slot-only defenders. But how teams allocated their DB resources on Day Two is telling. We are not far off these premium slot defenders routinely going in the middle of the first round.
Who will have the biggest immediate impact?
The Cardinals didn’t overthink it with the fourth pick. In Marvin Harrison Jr, they took the cleanest, most polished receiver in the draft at a position of pressing need.
The thing that stands out with Harrison is not that he wins, but how he wins. Michael Irvin is a guru of all things receiving. He consistently talks about receivers who win late in the rep. Win early in the NFL, particularly down the field or at the intermediate level, and corners have a chance to recover. Everyone – sans Daniel Sorensen – is fast. Receivers who find ways to back down corners, to brake late, to win away from their body, to nudge, barge, and uncover just as the ball is arriving, have the best shot at succeeding.
No one in this class did that better than Harrison in college. He is versatile in his release patterns. He modulates his tempo out in the route. He demolishes press coverage. He eats versus zone. He might not be the deepest burner, but he’s always able to create a cushion.
In a Cardinals offense sorely needing some reliability, Harrison will be the go-to guy from the jump.
What was the best value pick in round 1?
Indianapolis Colts, Pick 15: Laiatu Latu, Edge, UCLA
It has to be Latu. Jon Ledyard and I went deep on the joys of Latu in our podcast on edge-rushing prospects which you can listen to here.
Indy would have loved to have been in the Brock Bowers sweepstakes. But with Bowers off the board, the Colts essentially had the No 1 overall pick in the 2024 defensive draft. They used the 15th pick to grab the best edge rusher in the class.
Teams have access to more statistics than ever, but when it comes to the final evaluation, GMs fall back on the oldest method of all: watching the damn games. And if you watch those games, it’s clear Latu is as gifted as any player in this class.
There were medical concerns throughout the draft process that initially dinged Latu. He suffered a neck injury at Washington in 2020 and was forced to retire from the sport. During his hiatus, he had multiple operations on his neck and took up rugby in Seattle. In 2022, he was cleared to return to football and transferred to UCLA, where he spent the next 24 months dusting all before him.
It’s the style that grabs you with Latu. He’s the most distinctive pass-rushing prospect in recent years. It’s tempting to say Latu plays at his own pace, but that phrase is typically attached to slower guys. The 23-year-old is explosive in tight spaces. He’s good slow and fast. He plays at whatever pace serves him. There are times when he isn’t even really rushing the passer, at least not in the traditional sense. It’s as though he’s playing his own sport, some fusion of MMA and interpretive dance; he’s all limbs and head fakes and unorthodox approaches to knifing into the backfield. It’s unconventional to the point of disruption. On one trip, he’s all finesse. The next, he might bulldoze through the same lineman.
Latu can leap; he can win in all three phases of the rush (outside, inside, through the rep); he can mash people on stunts and twists. There are time win he appears to aperate from gap to gap. Unusually for a college rusher, he has reached that rare state of consciousness in which a defender manipulates entire offenses, rather than reacting to them. Some pass-rushers gamble; Latu is counting cards.
There are times when you’re left fielding bad for offensive linemen. Come on, Laiatu. Give this guy a chance. But not Latu. He takes a special almost cruel pleasure in tempting blockers and then punishing them. His tape against Arizona is for mature audiences only.
There are times evaluating Latu when all you can do is shake your head. Watch him versus USC, and you’ll be calling up your chiropractor:
Latu has an innate sense for how to throw off an opposing lineman. He can move his body in what seems like four different directions at once. He uses those herky-jerky head fakes, stutter steps and wild hands to unnerve blockers. He hits blockers with a stab, forces them to narrow their feet, to destablize their base, and then he moves in for the kill.
Run through a Best Of tape and you see everything: jabs, stabs, counter, cross-chops, up and unders. There is a vicious euro step. And when he decides to unload, he has thunder in his hands. Rarely do you see a college pass-rusher so refined at winning on all three planes (swooping around the arc; winning through a lineman’s chest; winning through the inside shoulder). Latu marches around with the confidence of a five-year vet.
Winning at the point-of-attack is one thing. Finishing is something else. That sense of anti-gravity – that Latu is dancing above the ground – carries through. He has special contact balance, matched only, in recent drafts, by TJ Watt.
Latu is stylistically mesmerizing, but that style comes with substance. He finished with 27 sacks and 107 total pressures in his two years at UCLA, the highest rate in college football. His 26.2% pass rush win rate in his final year is tied for the highest figure on record. If the surgeries affected his game, it didn’t show up at UCLA. In two seasons with the team he did not miss a game due to injury. Teams may have been concerned early on by the medical process, but as the draft kicked off, it’s clear they defaulted to the tape.
The fit in Indy is ideal. The Colts run a four-down-and-go style when rushing the passer. Last season, they finished 29th in the league in blitz rate last year – and 22nd in pressure rate. They had two choices this season: double down on their style and increase their talent level; become more a blitz-centric defense.
Latu provides the answer. He is a dominant one-on-one rusher who also just happens to hammer people on stunts and twists. He can form the bedrock of a top-tier pass rushing group and elevate the collective. Indy had a slim stunt rate last season for a team that refused to blitz; Latu should solve any all stylistic and talent questions. Chris Ballard was right, they nabbed the best fucking pass-rusher in the draft with the 15th pick.
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