I talk college football with Michael Felder each Thursday on my NBC Sports Radio show, so I asked him for his opinion on a potential Cowboys draft pick.
I asked Felder, a college football reporter for Bleacher Report and former defensive back for North Carolina, for his take on Florida State's Jalen Ramsey. Felder watches a ton of video and I asked him what the Seminoles All-America defensive back does well, because many people in the draft analyst world have knocked him for only having one interception and others wonder what his true position is: safety or cornerback?
Here’s Felder’s breakdown:
"What doesn’t he do is my question? No interceptions? That’s not a thing that fazes me Newy. He makes pass breakups, he denies the ball exceptionally well which means they are not throwing the ball over to where he’s at. I think that says a lot about why he is not getting some of those interceptions. Watch Florida State play from his freshman year where he played a safety to his sophomore year at the star position to his junior year where he played the cornerback spot, he’s a guy who is active behind the line of scrimmage — that’s not something you say a lot about people who are sometime projected to play at the cornerback spot at the next level."
Felder kept on with his praise emphatically telling me, “He can be behind the line of scrimmage as a blitzer. He’s willing to come up and make hits in the run. This is a guy that was playing the safety and playing the star position in the ACC championship game in 2014 and they had an injury and he kicked out and played corner but was also a guy that was forced to play some cover two and was a force against the option of Georgia Tech so my answer is what can’t he do because I think he is exceptional at every single part of the job of playing defensive back. Whether it’s corner, whether it’s slot corner or it’s the safety spot."
I asked Felder if Ramsey was the best defensive player in the draft and he went further, saying, "He’s the number one player in the draft. I've thought the last couple of years he was the number one player in college football. I think Jalen Ramsey is the number one player in the draft."
If the Cowboys have a chance to draft Ramsey fourth overall, the junior defensive back may be too good to pass up.
Local
The latest news from around North Texas.
I asked Chris Landry of LandryFootball.com on my NBC Sport Radio show who Ramsey reminded him of. The former NFL scout told me Charles Woodson in his prime years in Green Bay. That is high praise, because Woodson is going to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The recently-retired defensive back made nine Pro Bowl teams and was named All Pro three times, starting off as a corner before becoming a safety.
