STRENGTHS
Jourdan is one of the top cover corners in this draft. He is a quick twitch athlete that has the athletic talent to play on either side of the ball and as a special team’s weapon. Jourdan has the hand/eye coordination of a barehanded snake catcher. He has those quick feet and can flip his hips in a blink. Jourdan has catch up speed so if you think you can beat him deep forgetaboutit. He is an excellent special team’s returner using his quickness and peripheral vision along with excellent lateral explosion to make yardage almost every time he doesn’t fair catch the ball. Jourdan has the pass catching talent to intercept the ball better than most receivers’ on offense can catch a ball. He has good leaping ability to knock balls down or intercept them at their highest point. He has excellent football intelligence, works well with his defensive teammates and shows leadership through his play on the field. He is a defensive, special teams and if need be an offensive playmaker and they are very hard to find.

CONCERNS
Jourdan’s size is the only issue teams will use to down grade him. Of course they will be wrong to do that because he plays bigger than his size and can make plays on defense and special teams. But history and stubbornness will win out and like I said, most teams will downgrade Jourdan because for the position of corner back he is on the small side.

BOTTOM LINE
Size matters in the NFL except… when it doesn’t. There are exceptions to every rule and I believe in this case that exception pertains to a player like Jourdan who has more talent to play the game than a lot of bigger players have. Jourdan minimizes his lack of size by using the correct techniques to cover and tackle players bigger than his size. His impact is as a play maker so taking him off the field because of his lack of height would obviously be counterproductive. So what do you do as a coach to help minimize his size being taking advantage of? You move him around your defense. Jourdan can be used all over your defense as a cover corner, or a free safety, or in nickel/ dime on the inside to take away those small quick receivers all because of his excellent cover skills and tackling techniques and quick twitch athletic talent. Quarterbacks will think they can take advantage of his lack of size and will forget about his leaping ability and try to throw high against him and Jourdan will pick that ball off at its high point like he was walking in a field of apple trees, noticed a perfect apple just out of his reach and with little effort jumps and snatches that apple right off the tree. I do agree that size does matter, it matters how it’s used to take advantage of it large or small.

Drew Boylhart  FEB.2017