Philadelphia Eagles: Jeff Gladney is the perfect partner for Darius Slay

Despite investing heavily in rebuilding their defense in free agency, the Philadelphia Eagles shouldn’t hesitate to draft Jeff Gladney in the first round.

After pumping in tens of millions of dollars to rebuilding their defense in free agency, there’s no way the Philadelphia Eagles would use their first-round pick on yet another defensive player, right? There’s just no way.

In theory, that idea tracks, but ever so often, a player becomes such a good value that a team just can’t pass him up, regardless of how stacked they are at any one position.

Jeff Gladney is one of those players.

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A three-star recruit out of New London, Texas, Gladney started 42 of a possible 50 games for the TCU Horned Frogs over his five years on campus and established himself as the best cornerback in the Big 12. Facing off against some of the most prolific passing offenses in the country week-in and week-out, Gladney has tested early and often over his four years in Fort Worth, Texas, and yet, remained a stalwart defender in Gary Patterson‘s defensive backfield.

Over his final two seasons at TCU, Gladney allowed 54 catches for 690 yards and four touchdowns on 130 targets, or a little over 5.3 yards per target. That number is impressive, but it becomes when more so when you consider that despite measuring in at 5-foot-10, 183 pounds, the Horned Frogs allowed Gladney to match up against their opposing team’s best wide receiver, traveling to either perimeter position, and even into the slot on occasion. That’s right, Gladney could conceivably face off against a certified speedster like Denzel Mims one week – who called Gladney the toughest cornerback he faced in college here – a massive 6-foot-5 receiver like Hakeem Butler the next, and a potential top-10 pick like Oklahoma‘s CeeDee Lamb the week following.

Speaking of Butler, Gladney’s ability to blanket the 6-foot-5, 227 pound Iowa State product to the tune of two catches for 14 yards when the duo faced off in 2018 was so impressive that the NFL Network’s Lindsay Rhodes explicitly asked him about it when he was a guest on NFL Total Access in early March – check it out here.

So how, you may ask, is Gladney able to be so versatile and remain such a consistent defender regardless of his competition? I’m glad you asked.

First and foremost, Gladney is fast. At the combine, Gladney ran a 4.48 40 yard dash, which is admittedly pretty good, but he was clocked as low as 4.34 at TCU before suffering a preseason torn meniscus that limited the shutdown corner athletically in 2019.

That’s right, Gladney ran a 4.48 with a torn meniscus. I’m not a doctor, but I imagine having a tear in your knee is going to hamper activities that require bending just a tad.

But Gladney didn’t win by speed alone over his career in TCU. No, no, no, Gladney’s game is so impressive because of his tireless desire to make opposing wide receivers miserable. The proud owner of a ‘My Ball’ mentality, Gladney broke up 37 passes and intercepted five more over his college career, including an insane 26 pass breakups and three interceptions as an upperclassman.

If there’s one thing Jim Schwartz loves in a cornerback, it’s breaking up passes.

Had Gladney played for a team like Alabama, or played the 2019 season without a torn meniscus, or ran below a 4.40 at the combine, there would probably be talk of the still-only-22-year-old redshirt senior being in conversation with Florida‘s C.J. Henderson as the third cornerback off the board, but that just hasn’t been the case. Instead, Gladney is typically being mocked anywhere from the late first round to the early second round in the 2020 NFL Draft, with some letting him slip all the way out of the top-50 entirely.

That’s just slanderous.

Is Gladney a perfect cornerback who can play in any scheme? No, but very few players can boast such scheme flexibility. Gladney isn’t an ideal fit in a scheme that needs big press cornerbacks at the line of scrimmage, and his speed may be less useful in a scheme built around off zone concepts, but for a team like the Eagles, who spend the majority of the game in cover 3/cover 1 with a good bit of man sprinkled in, there isn’t a better player who will be on the board at 21.

Lined up across from Darius Slay as the Eagles’ cornerback number 2, Gladney would presumably be tasked with facing up against opposing team’s second-best wide receiver for the majority of any given game. While matching him up against super-sized receivers like, say, Mike Evans still probably isn’t the best allocation of assets when you have a player like Slay on the roster, Gladney is fast enough to keep up with the league’s premier deep threats, and has enough fight to mix things up against even the most physically imposing wide receivers.

Gladney could also play in the slot full-time, or move around as part of a three-man cornerback set also featuring Slay, and the Birds’ top in-house option to replace Ronald Darby in 2020, Avonte Maddox. With that trio in place, Schwartz could finally rely more consistently on the man coverage concepts he famously deployed as the Buffalo Bills‘ defensive coordinator in 2014, and could finally retire the dreaded ‘sticks‘ alignment the team has been forced to rely on for third-downs out of a fear of being beat on the outside.

For those keeping track at home, that would give the Eagles three cornerbacks with sub-4.5 speed and the position versatility to play all three typical cornerback positions. After trotting out slow cornerbacks with good ball skills like Rasul Douglas, Jalen Mills, and Eric Rowe over the past half-decade, it’d be nice to invest a premium pick on a fast cornerback with ball skills.

Factor in the fact that Philadelphia only has three defensive backs under contract in 2020, Slay, Maddox, and Rodney McLeod, and securing a high-upside cornerback on a five-year contract makes a ton of sense from a purely financial standpoint in a salary capped league.

Next. The pressure is on for Matt Pryor. dark

When the Philadelphia Eagles go on the clock at pick 21 in the 2020 NFL Draft, there will be a ton of solid players who can step right in and start as a rookie. Jeff Gladney may or may not be one of those players. However, he will without a doubt be one of the best-fitting players left on the board and could allow the franchise to sleep soundly knowing that they have finally fixed their defensive secondary once and for all. From an asset allocation standpoint, that’s about as safe a pick as an NFL general manager can ask for – Howie Roseman just has to have the courage to make it.

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