Detroit Lions: What can be learned from drafting Teez Tabor?

Why it didn’t make sense

To keep this as simple as possible for brevity’s sake, let us say that Tabor was never really asked to lock down a future NFL player while in college. He always had more athletic teammates who covered the opponent’s best receivers, including Quincy Wilson who was selected prior to Tabor in ’17. Tabor was smart enough and had good enough reactions to do what was asked of him at Florida, which was largely to keep receivers in front of him by playing off of them eight yards.

KCW also watched Tabor film. We selected four games where Tabor was matched up against NFL competition. Florida versus Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and LSU with Tabor as a starter.

He consistently got beat underneath by good players but the Florida defense was good enough to not leave him out on an island for too long, limiting a team’s ability to go after him. Some of the time, like against Alabama, he barely had to defend a pass all game although he was usually in a good position before reading the run plays that were being called.

The Florida pass rush and linebackers were always very athletic and they put pressure on opposing QB’s. Or some teams ran all over Florida, making his cover skills less of a focus. In short, not many teams had a chance to go after him the way NFL teams can pick on a mismatch.

These are some of the reasons that the Combine exists and why Pro Day workouts are important. General managers and position coaches can test prospects on skills that are required in their pro system. Physical tests allow every player to be taken out of their system, what you would see on film, and be judged side-by-side with peers.

RAS speaks

Kent Lee Platte invented a system to help rank athletes, he calls it RAS (Relative Athletic Score). The 0-10 grade is created to compare an athlete to peers at the same position. Below is his breakdown of Tabor’s measurements in a Tweet about the Detroit Lions cornerbacks going into this season, complete with RAS scores; spoiler alert, Tabor gets a 4.26 score.

Tabor was average or less in almost every category except for height, weight, and hand size; not complimentary for the 9th player drafted at his position in 2017. His agility score was average to a little above. His explosion score was very low for being the most important interview-workout of his life.

In terms of speed, only his initial 10-yards were better than average. For reference, here (next slide) are Darius Slay‘s scores. These scores quantify what kind of athlete you are getting based upon his Combine or Pro Day results. Take it however you want, beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder.