Anthony Brown CB/S Purdue
STRENGTHS
Anthony is an excellent athlete with good football instincts and intelligence. He has the size and athletic ability to play more than one position in your defensive backfield at a very high level. He shows leadership skills through his play on the field and is a playmaker, intercepting the ball and adding yardage to the play. He has hands as good as many of the wide receivers in the draft class; his workouts showed his ability to catch the ball as well as his ability to adjust to the ball in the air and make the tough catch. Anthony has quick feet and comes up quickly to support the run and make an open field tackle. He is excellent in zone coverage and does a solid job in man-to-man coverage also. Anthony is a playmaker and you can’t have enough playmakers playing the corner back position or for that matter playing any position on both sides of the ball.
CONCERNS
Anthony will need more repetitions playing man-to-man coverage but as soon as he gets those repetitions he should improve and maybe not become a shutdown corner, but become a core player and a fan favorite and an impact corner for the team that selects him. He does miss some tackles at times, so he will have to clean that up. If he gets moved to the safety position, his ball hawk skills will be obvious.
TALENT BOARD ROUND: 2
Anthony has those long arms that give him a big defensive radius and because of that radius, can be used inside or outside and also as a cover safety. Add to that his talents to be used as a slot receiver on the other side of the ball and top that with his special teams talents as a punt returner and gunner on the coverage units and I think you can all see what I’m talking about. A multi-talented defensive back with the ability to play more than one position and who can make plays at those positions. Now let’s add to that his work out numbers and the fact that he did both defensive back and receiver workouts at the combine. Then, add to all of that, his game film that shows impact play after impact play in both zone and single coverage and as a gunner on the special team units. So I’m grading Anthony as a zone defensive back with developmental single coverage skills who can catch a ball like a receiver with film to back up his potential talent. For me I have to grade Anthony as a player I would like to select sometime in the 2nd round. At least that’s what I see on his film. Time will tell. Right now as of this writing there is no talk about Anthony at all so I’m not sure what round he could be selected in. Most of the time players like Anthony don’t get selected until the 3rd, 4th or 5th rounds but in this draft who knows where he will be selected?
