Four Overrated 2024 Cornerback Prospects

Welcome back to NFLTR’s 2024 draft prospect series, where we examine some underrated and overrated prospects at each position. Closing out the cornerback position, today we have four overrated prospects to discuss.

Cornerback is a volatile position where performances can vary dramatically over time, even for the best in the business. As a result, it can be difficult to parse out cornerback prospects, as up-and-down production isn’t inherently a red flag like it is with most other positions. As evaluators, it’s important to fall back on fundamentals: how consistently and how well is the prospect in the right place and doing the right thing? How well do they read offenses, receivers, and route combinations? Do they have the athleticism to keep up at the next level?

Without further ado, let’s jump right in to the overrated cornerback prospects:

Terrion Arnold, Alabama

I am strongly at odds with the consensus on Terrion Arnold. A young, productive cornerback out of Alabama, Arnold has much of the NFL world enamored with his smoothness, agility and acceleration. Many evaluators have him as their top corner in this class.

Despite these traits, Arnold has some glaring issues in his game that make me skeptical he’ll be successful in the league. After taking a redshirt year, Arnold started the last two seasons at Alabama opposite Kool-Aid McKinstry. As teams were often reluctant to throw toward McKinstry, Arnold got targeted a lot, and he has the ball production to match. He was vulnerable to the big play but cranked out enough high-leverage plays of his own to offset that.

To start with the positives, Arnold is an excellent run defender and blitzer. He can be over-aggressive at times, but he flies around in run support and is a sound tackler. In coverage, Arnold’s change-of-direction abilities are truly special. He’s able to start and stop on a dime and glides in and out of cuts and breaks. While he can struggle to track the ball at times in coverage, he has good ball skills and soft hands, which help him create interceptions where other corners may simply create a pass breakup.

But Arnold also struggles in some of the most important categories for cornerbacks. He’s frequently out of position, biting on double moves and failing to keep up with shiftier wide receivers. He takes too many risks, leading to open receivers, and struggles to match receivers on downfield routes. Arnold often fails to properly read routes in zone coverage, leading to missed assignments and blown coverages.

On tape, Arnold was often able to fall back on his speed and recovery from some of these mistakes in college, but that will get exposed in the NFL. Arnold could improve with more experience and continued coaching, but this brings us to what we learned at the Scouting Combine.

Arnold ran a 4.5-second 40-yard dash and produced average results in the explosiveness tests. For many prospects, these would be fine numbers, but the biggest selling point for Arnold as a prospect was his athleticism. An elite athlete with good traits and inexperience-related mistakes is a coachable player with a very high ceiling. Arnold may not be as good an athlete as first believed, however.

What we’re left with is a cornerback prospect with smooth agility and short-area quickness who struggles to match shifty receivers and lacks top-end long speed. Middling athleticism combined with poor habits and frequent busts is a tough sell. Arnold is my CB6 and I do not have him rated as a first-round prospect, though if he improves his tracking ability and learns to be more patient, he could still be a starting cornerback in the NFL.

Ennis Rakestraw Jr., Missouri

Before the Combine, Rakestraw Jr. was steadily climbing up draft boards. A four-year starter at Missouri, Rakestraw Jr. missed some time with injuries but was a steadily productive player in college. He has the tenacity and demeanor that defensive coaches fall in love with, and he plays with an un-coachable competitive fire.

His workout numbers at the Combine weren’t very good, however, and it brought back into question some of the concerns that popped up on tape. Rakestraw Jr. was getting first-round buzz pre-Combine, but now I’m not sure if he should even be selected on Day 2.

Rakestraw Jr. has good short-area quickness and is a physical cornerback. Sometimes he can be too physical, but he’s good at redirecting receivers in press coverage and jamming them off the line to disrupt their timing. Despite this, most of his work is done in zone coverage, and he does an excellent job of reading routes as they develop and driving to break up passes. He’s a smart player who can read and react with the best of them. He’ll sniff out trick plays and isn’t fooled on double moves or purposeful redirects. He’s good at staying in phase with receivers and making it tough on them at the catch point.

The problem for Rakestraw Jr. is he’s simply not a very good athlete. His best workout numbers were only average for the position, and this lack of athleticism shows up on tape. His 4.54-second 40 time represents poor long speed for the position, and at 5-11 and 183 pounds he lacks the size and length necessary to bother bigger receivers. His mirroring ability is an unknown, which is a concern as well. Rakestraw profiles as a player who might just end up out of his depth as a professional athlete, particularly at a position like corner.

Rakestraw also had just one interception in his entire college career. While he’s good at driving on underneath routes and sniffing out route combos, he struggles to track the ball in the air downfield and rarely gets his head around. Interceptions are somewhat luck-based and some players, despite a lack of interceptions in college, still possess the traits to snag more throughout their career. Rakestraw Jr. is not one of those players — it’s easy to see on tape why the ball isn’t finding him.

Ultimately, I would have concerns about drafting Rakestraw and expecting him to start. Many evaluators still have him ranked as a top-50 player, and I just can’t buy into that. He possesses a lot of intangibles that will endear him to coaches, but his below-average athleticism will be a real problem at the next level.

I’d put him in the late third- or early fourth-round range, the perfect target for teams drafting backup cornerbacks. He’s a reliable player with good fundamentals, he just lacks the athletic edge to be an impact starter.

Kalen King, Penn State

Entering the 2023 season, King was one of the top cornerbacks on most draft boards. After posting an electric 2022 campaign, King looked to build off that performance and stack a solid 2023 to boost his draft stock. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

King looked like a different player in 2023, causing many to reevaluate his 2022 tape and question his fit on an NFL team. King looked legitimately good in 2022. Nimble, quick movements allowed him to keep pace with every receiver he faced. He played with great burst and smooth hips, rarely got turned around and could fly around the field making plays. In single coverage he was elite, locking down receiver after receiver, providing his team with blanket coverage on his assignment.

Cornerback is a volatile position, though, and nobody demonstrates more than King. He struggled mightily in 2023, getting lost in zone coverages, allowing easy separation downfield and frequently losing balance mirroring receivers over the middle of the field. For as good as King’s athletic traits are, his technique and anticipation did not look NFL-caliber.

King had a phenomenal 2022 season in man coverage, but a closer inspection of that tape revealed similar weaknesses. He struggles in zone coverages, as he reacts slowly to what he’s seeing and gets routinely lost in route combinations. His footwork is sloppy and erratic, which negates much of his speed and agility.

A player with this type of profile is the perfect mid-round developmental pick. King is too inconsistent for even a priority backup role right away, but his athleticism gives him starter-level potential down the line, which is more than you can say for many mid-round picks. Players with his traits usually get drafted higher than their tape would suggest, and it’s likely this holds true for King.

Josh Newton, TCU

Newton was a favorite of some evaluators coming into the 2023 draft cycle, though his 2022 tape ended up being better than what he put on film in 2023. He’s a smaller corner with decent athleticism and experience in both the slot and on the outside. He’s struggled against the top wide receiver prospects he’s faced, however, and loses ground on longer routes. Evaluators are split on where to rank him, but I struggle to see him succeeding in the NFL given how much he needs to be protected by scheme at the next level.

On the positive side, Newton has a ton of starting experience. He’s physical in press-man coverage and knows how to disrupt and redirect receivers off the snap. He plays with good anticipation, and is able to react quickly in zone coverage. Newton has solid ball skills with four interceptions and 21 pass breakups in two years at TCU.

But Newton simply lacks the size and long speed to hang with NFL receivers. Against the best competition he faced in college, he was routinely beaten downfield. He struggles to run with elite receivers and consistently fails to make plays on the ball even when he is in phase. His athletic testing was fine, but he’s quicker than he is fast and this leaves him vulnerable to giving up big plays. In underneath coverage, he can be protected a bit, but he’ll be exposed at the pro level if he needs to carry routes down the field.

Newton is probably a back-of-the-roster or practice squad guy, a late-round pick or priority UDFA. He’s smart and focused, skills that can help him stick in the league, but he gets beaten by NFL-caliber receivers far too often to be relied upon for serious playing time, at least at first. If a team is enamored by this 2022 tape, perhaps he goes higher than expected, but that season would appear to be an outlier.