So our DB rooom shouldn’t look like this?

[PittsburghCane]

Asante Samuels - Dog
Jaden Davis - Baller
Te Cory Couch - Great Player

Common trait though?
Size.

All under 5’9 without shoes on. But prototypical CBs are tall and long for a reason. Typically better inherent range, better against the ever growing WRs (see Njoku, Hightower, Ladson, Dunmore, Juedy, Manuel, Payton etc just to name a few in the past couple years. Not too mention they can better cover TEs if necessary and are more able to fill out and help tackle and protect the boundary. Does that mean there aren’t small cats that can do the same? Of course not. But they are few and far between. I think regularly going after a certain size profile is just smart recruiting, unless the small is a full package type (see Bandy, Quan). But if we get all the small cars that I always see folks on the board complaint we don’t get we would end up with a secondary that would get whooped by schools with traditionally bigger players and set back the db room as a whole. I mean, as many complaints I hear about not selling out for small dbs, would y’all really trade the three mentioned above for the three in the pic below?

 

[Canesfreak]

My only knock on Couch is how diminutive the kid is. Bandy is 5'9, but the kid is thick. Couch is built like an 8th grader, with a very small frame. Imagine him covering a wideout like Cager, Langham, or Hightower? You put guys like that in the slot and it would be a disaster. If we were going to go small, I'd rather have a guy like Bookie Radley-Hiles, who plays big and has some size.

 

[Zanecane]

I chose not to read 75% of this post. So I'm not 100% sure what it says. But put on tape of Dean playing over the past 8 months looking like he's never played football before and tell me that size is the attribute we should be coveting.

Ball skills and instincts matter more than size. If they have both they can be special. But if they only have 1 I'll take the natural corner.

 

[Ziggy]

Think about the corners we signed in 2018 - Ivey, Frierson, Blades, and Bethel. All right around 6', long arms, and have frames to grow into. Bandy is the only exception on the current roster and we all know why he was an exception, that dog mentality. You can take a Samuels, Davis, Couch every so often but you can't take 1-2 every class. I think Coach Rumph and DVD are confident enough in their coaching that they would rather have the guy with all the tools than the guy who is limited but a better HS corner.

 

[PittsburghCane]

My only knock on Couch is how diminutive the kid is. Bandy is 5'9, but the kid is thick. Couch is built like an 8th grader, with a very small frame. Imagine him covering a wideout like Cager, Langham, or Hightower? You put guys like that in the slot and it would be a disaster. If we were going to go small, I'd rather have a guy like Bookie Radley-Hiles, who plays big and has some size.

This.

 

[PittsburghCane]

Think about the corners we signed in 2018 - Ivey, Frierson, Blades, and Bethel. All right around 6', long arms, and have frames to grow into. Bandy is the only exception on the current roster and we all know why he was an exception, that dog mentality. You can take a Samuels, Davis, Couch every so often but you can't take 1-2 every class. I think Coach Rumph and DVD are confident enough in their coaching that they would rather have the guy with all the tools than the guy who is limited but a better HS corner.

#2

 

[CFLCane]

My only knock on Couch is how diminutive the kid is. Bandy is 5'9, but the kid is thick. Couch is built like an 8th grader, with a very small frame. Imagine him covering a wideout like Cager, Langham, or Hightower? You put guys like that in the slot and it would be a disaster. If we were going to go small, I'd rather have a guy like Bookie Radley-Hiles, who plays big and has some size.

Exactly, Malek Young was built the same way as Bandy....Tyrann Mathieu as well. I'm fine with having 1-2 of these small corners on the roster but you can't have a roster full of them. Ball skills are great but at 160lbs you're not impeding any WR off the line.

As drake says

Gettin bodied by a singin n****

 

[PittsburghCane]

I chose not to read 75% of this post. So I'm not 100% sure what it says. But put on tape of Dean playing over the past 8 months looking like he's never played football before and tell me that size is the attribute we should be coveting.

Ball skills and instincts matter more than size. If they have both they can be special. But if they only have 1 I'll take the natural corner.

So I

I chose not to read 75% of this post. So I'm not 100% sure what it says. But put on tape of Dean playing over the past 8 months looking like he's never played football before and tell me that size is the attribute we should be coveting.

Ball skills and instincts matter more than size. If they have both they can be special. But if they only have 1 I'll take the natural corner.

Devils advocate to your very good point; I would easily say teams are better off taking 5 players with Deans measurables over 5 players with Samuels measurables. There is a much higher failure rate for the latter than the former.

However to your point, yes, Dean is playing very inconsistently.

 

[Jassid82]

I will be the first to say that I am not a fan of the small DBs. (or at least having more then 1 or 2 on the roster) You take one per year. Yes I wish we had went after Samuels Jr to play that nickel spot but these WRs are getting bigger (Ladson) and more athletic (Payton) and every kid who is 5'9 and has that "dog" mentality isn't going to hold up.

To the OPs point, Ivey and Frierson look like college upperclassman already when I saw them at the Spring game. Those are the types of athletes that get you over the hump when we go up against Clemson.

 

[Cuban-Cane]

I have no problem with the staff saying f it we sticking to 6 feet plus at CB.

 

[Deleted member 16870]

I don't care about none of those besides Asante. Just because if we knew we wanted 4 corners and willing to take one more for Tyson they should have been pushing the whole time for him. They liked Asante way more then bethel. We don't have space in this class for more then 1-2 corners so no it doesn't bother me if we don't take the other two.

 

[DusseDez]

Staff should be recruiting Elam smh I would love to hear the reason why they aren’t

 

[moshated305]

OP is correct. You don't see the top teams recruiting multiple short corners per cycle. Go check Bama, OSU and LSU's rosters. Even one guy a year like someone else said is not the norm.

Also check the NFL draft, rarely do you use short corners taken in the first round. Only 2 of 23 CBs drafted in the first round in the last 5 years were under 5'11. Vernon Hargreaves and Jason Verret both measured in at 5'10 at the combine.