NFL Draft Profile: CB Shavon Revel Jr.

Breaking down East Carolina CB Shavon Revel Jr.

East Carolina cornerback Shavon Revel Jr. is one of the more intriguing prospects in this year’s draft class. From an athletic profile standpoint, there aren’t many corners that can match him. He’s one of the biggest and longest corners in this draft standing at 6-foot-2, 194 pounds with 32⅝-inch arms. He didn’t do any athletic testing due to a torn ACL last season, but on film he looks to be a very fluid mover for a cornerback of his size. The raw traits are there, but he comes from a smaller school that didn’t always face the best opposition, so there is a lot of projection in his evaluation.

At his best, Revel looks like a long, physical press corner that can disrupt receivers at the line of scrimmage by jamming them or shut them down by sticking close to them throughout the play..

On this play, Revel lines up in press coverage against an isolated receiver to the right of the offensive formation. East Carolina is sending a blitz, trusting Revel to hold up in man-to-man coverage on his own. Revel does exactly that. At the snap of the ball, he doesn’t look to jam the receiver, instead showing patient feet and forcing the receiver to declare his intentions. Once the receiver takes an outside release, Revel works to stay on top of the route and uses his positioning to force the receiver wider to the sideline. By forcing him outside, Revel effectively closes any potential throwing window for the quarterback.

However, due to the blitz, the quarterback feels pressure and decides to take his one-on-one matchup regardless, putting the ball up for grabs. Revel is engaged with the receiver at this point, both fighting for positioning but Revel is still on top of the route in a great spot. Because of that, he’s able to look back for the football while knowing exactly where the receiver is. Revel sees the throw the whole way and attempts to make a play on the ball. Unfortunately, the receiver turns into a defender and is able to get his hand into the catch point to break up what would have been an interception, but it still goes down as a pass broken up by Revel and a good example of what he’s capable of.

There was a lot to like about that rep. Patient feet in press coverage, good positioning to force the receiver into the sideline and closing the throwing window, and then the ball skills to know when to safely look back for the ball and get both hands on it. Later in that same game, those ball skills showed up again, but this time from an entirely different situation.

Here, Revel plays off coverage in what appears to be a zone coverage of sorts. The coverage is distorted because the offense runs a trick play. They hand the ball off to sell a run fake, only for the running back to stop and pitch the ball back to the quarterback on a flea flicker. This causes defenders to rush that perhaps shouldn’t have been rushing, thinking it was a run and then continuing into a blitz because they knew they wouldn’t be able to get back into coverage. That leaves a big hole in the defense, which the offense looks to exploit.

The receiver opposite Revel at the snap runs a deep over route, a common route off of a play-action fake. Revel, as a deep outside third defender, isn’t responsible for the route once it breaks inside over the middle, but he recognizes the situation and breaks out of the system to fix the problem. He sees the receiver crossing into open field and follows him across the field, breaking the structure of the defense. He can do that because he’s playing from off and with vision on the quarterback. He can see the quarterback is under pressure and drifting to his left to make a throw, which makes it unlikely he’ll be able to throw to the zone Revel was responsible for.

As such, Revel is able to track the crossing route and drive down on it to undercut the route as the ball arrives. He times the undercut perfectly and intercepts the pass right in front of the receiver. From there, Revel has a ton of open field to work with. He continues his momentum to sprint down the sideline as he looks to score a touchdown off his interception. His teammate does a great job getting out in front and blocking the quarterback, who was the only offensive player with a chance of stopping Revel. With him blocked, Revel cuts his return back inside and takes it to the end zone for a 50-yard pick-6.

Those two plays highlight the upside in a prospect like Revel. The raw fundamentals are there. The size, the length, the athleticism, the ball skills. He can play man coverage, zone coverage and has the talent to develop into a very good cornerback in a variety of schemes. However, while the upside is certainly there, the consistency isn’t. There are plenty of reps with Revel where you also that he’s not the finished product and that facing some better competition could cause him some issues early on.