The Minnesota Vikings still need a cornerback to pair with Cameron Dantzler, even after acquiring Patrick Peterson. Fortunately, this draft has plenty of options at corner. Minnesota could use their No. 12 pick to fill the need, but their best bet may be trading down to draft Kaiir Elam out of the University of Florida.
While all of the hype over this cornerback class has revolved around the likes of Sauce Gardner, Derek Stingley Jr., and Andrew Booth, scouts and draft pundits have overlooked Elam despite how well he played in Gainesville.
Elam has the ideal size for a cornerback, standing at 6’2″ and weighing 193 lbs. Despite being a bigger corner, Elam does an excellent job keeping an even pad level and staying low to the ground when necessary. His physicality is a major asset. He can use his frame to jam opposing receivers at the line and force them to reroute when he presses them. His length, athleticism, physicality, and ball skills all shine when you look at his college tape.
Elam is not only able to press against the opposing wideouts in man coverage, but he can also flip his hips and adjust to the route when they attempt to stack him with their routes and attack his outside shoulder. He also possesses excellent recovery speed that helps him catch up to opposing wideouts when the ball is in the air. When put on an island against top wideouts, Elam can mirror the opposing pass-catchers’ routes, forcing incompletions.
He isn’t just a man-to-man corner. Elam has shown that he is equally as valuable in a zone scheme. Elam excels in zone coverage by using his length to make it harder for opposing quarterbacks to get easy completions against him. His ability to stay leveraged is also an asset since he can stay at the same level as the opposing wide receivers. Elam’s ball skills are the thing that shines through when you watch him in zone coverage. He can play forward and attack the ball when opposing wideouts sit in the soft spot in the zone against him.
Elam’s physicality is on full display when he’s facing the run. He isn’t afraid of contact from anyone and loves to get into the thick of the action to make a play. The main problem that I can see with him is his reliance on his physicality when tackling. Elam is so overly physical that sometimes he gets bailed out when he takes bad angles due to his superior strength at the college level. However, when he was left to make a tackle in the open field against a shiftier wideout, he was often left on the ground grasping for the opposing players’ legs. He will need to improve this in the NFL significantly.
Elam excels in many aspects of his game. However, some drawbacks have left him out of the discussion with his peers. It’s worth highlighting the bad angles he takes when attacking opposing players. Elam also gets grabby in coverage. While his physicality is one of his best traits, he tends to commit defensive holdings and pass interfaces with all of the contact that he makes against opposing wideouts.
He wouldn’t be the first grabby cornerback the Vikings have taken. Mike Zimmer had this same problem with Xavier Rhodes early in his career. Rhodes was a bit too grabby. Zimmer had Rhodes practice with boxing gloves to combat his tendency.
Elam will be available for the Vikings at the 12th-overall pick. But if they wanted to, they could potentially trade further into the first round and acquire more value in the middle rounds while still landing their guy.
Everything this offseason has suggested that the Vikings want to be aggressive with Kevin O’Connell and Kwesi Adofo-Mensah at the helm. Therefore, they will need to address the concerns with the secondary. It might not be the sexiest thing to trade down and build your middle-round capital. But when you have as many holes as the Vikings currently do, it might be a better idea for them to maximize the amount of upper- and middle-round selections they have.
