So You've Drafted Cooper DeJean: A New Owner's Guide
It took about 24 hours too long, but Iowa cornerback Cooper DeJean finally has a home in the NFL. DeJean was selected 40th overall, the eighth pick of the second round, by the Philadelphia Eagles on Friday evening. DeJean had been a consensus late-first round pick by experts heading into the Draft.
So why did he last until the second round? What's up with the injury history? Is he really better suited to safety? What does success look like? What should Eagles fans want to see? Go Iowa Awesome has your answers.
WHAT ARE HIS STRENGTHS?
Seriously: where to even begin?
DeJean declared for the 2024 NFL Draft after a junior season where he was declared a unanimous First-Team All-American at cornerback, despite missing the last four games of the season with a leg injury. DeJean finished the season with 41 tackles, 2.0 TFL, two interceptions, and five passes broken up. Most notably, DeJean did not allow a touchdown pass in 388 coverage snaps in 2023.
DeJean is a sure-handed, aggressive tackler in space and in run support, lending some credence to the safety projections he has received. If he tracks closer to a slot corner role, his tackle skills will be vitally important there as well.
Most notably, DeJean also has a nose for the end zone with the ball in his hands. His 69-yard punt return late in the fourth quarter against Michigan State put Iowa ahead in what finished as a 26-16 victory, and were it not for a famously controversial call at Kinnick Stadium against Minnesota in late October he would have put the Hawkeyes up late with a punt return TD as well.
Don't ask Hawkeye fans about invalid fair catch signals. Just don't.
DeJean also returned three interceptions for touchdowns during his Hawkeye career, including this stunner at Rutgers in 2022:
DeJean was the — pun not intended, but now it's staying — cornerstone of some of Iowa's most elite defenses under Broyles Award-winning defensive coordinator Phil Parker. The Hawkeyes ranked fourth in points allowed per game (13.2) and fifth in yards allowed per game (274.8) last season, marking the second-straight season and the third out of the last four where Iowa's defense ranked in the top-six in both categories.
Parker, whose defensive acumen might only be matched by his reticence with a microphone in front of him, recently lauded DeJean as a modern Nile Kinnick; Kinnick remains Iowa's only Heisman Trophy winner, receiving the trophy in 1939 after dominating on both sides of the ball for the undermanned Hawkeyes.
DeJean only played a handful of snaps on offense for Iowa, much to many fans' chagrin after he won a state title for Class 1-A OABCIG* at QB in high school. He probably could have played more, but it likely would have come at a cost to the effort he could put in on defense and special teams.
*Odebolt-Arthur-Battle Creek-Ida Grove, for those unfamiliar.
Still — the talent is there, and it translates well all over the field. NFL teams have taken his apparent viability at free safety as a sign that he may not be worth the draft capital typically afforded more to cornerbacks, but the evidence that DeJean would not be an effective cornerback at the next level hasn't shown up yet on his tape, and the production backs it up.
WHAT ARE HIS WEAKNESSES?
Most of the consternation surrounding DeJean's draft value centered on three things, which are largely out of his control:
1) Recently cleared from a season-ending leg injury;
2) Plays cornerback in a zone-heavy system that has not typically translated into great pros;
3) Let's just say it: he's white.
The first point doesn't appear to have affected DeJean too badly, as he turned in a Pro Day performance that solidified his stock as an elite prospect, including a 4.42 40-yard dash.
Perhaps he could have tested even better during the season, prior to his injury. Perhaps he could have tested better if the drills were held today. Perhaps it doesn't matter. Regardless, DeJean's measurables are not, in and of themselves, a concern.
The second point is the closest thing to a valid knock on DeJean, even though it's not really "on" him.
Iowa's legendary cornerbacks — Micah Hyde, Desmond King, Josh Jackson, Riley Moss and now DeJean, all Big Ten Defensive Back of the Year honorees while playing corner in Phil Parker's defense — have combined for four Pro Bowl nods, with Hyde tabbed twice as a safety (2017, 2021) and King as a nonspecific "defensive back" and a return specialist in 2018; King was essentially playing a mix of slot corner and cash for the Chargers that year, in addition to his return duties.
Other Hawkeyes cornerbacks under Ferentz who were drafted by the NFL include Charles Godfrey, Bradley Fletcher, Shaun Prater, Amari Spievey, Jordan Bernstine and Michael Ojemudia. Godfrey and Spievey were quickly moved to safety; Fletcher and Ojemudia earned starting spots at CB but were largely ineffective at the pro level; Prater and Bernstine saw limited snaps.
The system argument also only goes so far, though.
Parker is a Nick Saban protege from back at Michigan State, and he runs the closest thing to a Saban defense in college football today. Alabama's defensive backs have largely translated better to safety than corner at the NFL level too — Minkah Fitzpatrick began his transition away from corner in Tuscaloosa, and he's now a four-time Pro Bowler — but the recent NFL success of Tide corners like Patrick Surtain II and Treyvon Diggs should have been enough to convince pro franchises that zone-first corners can play at the next level.
Moreover, DeJean's production at CB frankly speaks for itself. He can play inside a phone booth as well as nearly anybody in the draft, as evidenced by his one-on-one coverage skills and productivity in punt and interception returns, and frankly if he were food to an NFL-caliber receiver it would have happened by now.
And then there's the white guy part.
For all the minutiae built into talent scouting at the next level, most of it is thinly veiled pseudoscience. The sheer number of high-round flameouts and late-round success stories that'll assuredly happen in the 2024 draft, like every one that has come before it, should give anyone pause about the "conventional wisdom" that so often guides narratives about players, and the certainty with which it's delivered.
And thanks to embarrassments like Heisman Trophy-winning QB (and future NFL MVP) Lamar Jackson nearly slipping out of the first round in 2018, some of that pseudoscience inarguably includes some unhealthy adherence to old ideas about skin color. It shouldn't, but it does. Everybody's guessing, and sometimes they outguess themselves. It is what it is.
With any luck, DeJean's future success should help throw such antiquated ideas about race into the garbage heap of history where they belong.
WILL HE SUCCEED IN PHILADELPHIA?
So while the "some teams see him as a safety" narrative on DeJean hasn't come out of nowhere, and it has more historical backing than most things that come from the dreaded "anonymous draft scouts" every spring, it shouldn't be enough to convince Philly that DeJean can't play corner at the highest level.
On top of that, DeJean being white is only a limiting factor to people who have never watched him play, or simply don't know what they're doing in evaluation.
So cornerback, safety, cash/star/joker/slot, return specialist — hell, running back, wide receiver — success or failure is as simple as what every other coach he's had has already realized: give Cooper DeJean the shot and stand back.
If DeJean rises to this challenge as well as he's risen to the rest, Eagles fans will soon have reason to rejoice at the other 31 franchises' lack of Day-1 vision for one of the most exciting players to ever, ever come out of Iowa City.