Washington drafts Su’a Cravens in 2nd round
USC’s intriguing tweener could be a safety or a linebacker.
Su'a Cravens may not have an NFL position just yet. But that's something for Washington to figure out after picking the versatile USC star in the second round of the 2016 NFL Draft.
Early on, Cravens played safety for the Trojans after committing to Lane Kiffin as a five-star linebacker in the class of 2013. And he did it well, collecting seven interceptions and returning one for a touchdown over those two seasons. But Cravens was also increasingly deployed as a blitzer and merchant of havoc in the box, and excelled in that role too, racking up 17 tackles for loss and five sacks as a sophomore in a campaign that brought him some down-ballot All-American honors.
As a junior, nearly all pretense of keeping Cravens in the secondary was dropped. He continued to thrive as an outside linebacker, leading USC with 86 tackles and nearly repeating his sophomore totals with 15 tackles for loss and 5.5 sacks. Clearly, Cravens had marked himself as a player with significant versatility.
As far as the NFL is concerned, though, flexibility is a gift and a curse, and Cravens was dogged by questions about his position because of it. Was Cravens a safety-sized linebacker like Deone Bucannon and Mark Barron have both been? Was he an undersized linebacker? A burly safety? Those questions didn't really get quieted by a decent but unspectacular NFL Scouting Combine showing, where Cravens compared unfavorably to both outside linebackers and strong safeties.
Cravens and his agent also passed up individual workouts after the combine, deciding to stand on his performances for the whole league and in college, which could have prevented him from finding a perfect match or making a team fall in love with him in March or April.
It likely didn’t endear him to the anonymous personnel man who delivered a stinging verdict on Cravens to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, branding him a “pretend player.”
“He’s a pretend player in a lot of ways,” said a third scout. “Bucannon is where he fits. I read where he wants to be a safety. He better say I want to be wherever they want me to be. I don’t think he makes enough plays. He’s one of those guys that gets up late so you call his name. That’s a bit of an exaggeration but there was some pretending tough guy to him.”
Still, all that doesn’t seem to have mattered all that much.
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