Las Vegas Raiders 2020 NFL Draft prospect profile: Jeff Gladney
Fit with Raiders
In terms of the scheme, TCU mostly played press-man, but there are a good amount of reps where Gladney is playing off-man and zone, so there is some versatility there.
We discussed the level of toughness that Gladney plays with, which shows up in his willingness to tackle and get in receivers’ faces who are much bigger than him. He had competitive showings against Hakeem Butler (6’5) in 2018 and Collin Johnson (6’6) in 2019. His thin frame is undoubtedly a concern, but he’s shown his play strength can make up for that a majority of the time.
Another area where Gladney excelled at in college was preventing big plays. According to PFF, over the past two years, he has forced tight coverage on 79.5% of his targets 10-plus yards downfield, which was the sixth-best rate and nearly 20 percentage points above the FBS average.
Gladney also has excellent ball skills with five career interceptions and an incredible 43 total pass deflections. According to Dane Bugler of The Athletic, Gladney and Amik Robertson of Louisiana Tech are the only corners in FBS with a least 15 pass deflections in each of the last two seasons.
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So we are talking about a competitive and athletic player with tremendous ball skills and the awareness to not get beat deep. The Raiders need all of these things in their secondary at the moment. Las Vegas gave up way too many big plays in 2019, and the defense at times looked very slow. I don’t know if Gladney has measurables to becomes a top-flight number one corner, but put him alongside a bigger corner in Mullen, and that could be a promising duo.