2023 NFL draft: 10 biggest defensive standouts from 2023 East-West Shrine & Senior Bowl weeks

#6. Lance Boykin, Coastal Carolina (Cornerback)

Lance Boykin, Coastal Carolina

A position group with several noteworthy names between the East-West Shrine and Senior Bowl was cornerback. I couldn’t help myself but talk about three games here with a couple of them from Vegas, and Lance Boykin is kicking things off.

Once just a two-star recruit, this guy began his career at Old Dominion before making a name for himself with the Chanticleers, where he recorded five interceptions, 12 PBUs and two sacks across his two seasons there.

Looking at this collection of receivers for the East team, there were plenty of challenges against pretty big names from Power-Five conferences (such as Arkansas’ Jadon Haselwood, Wake Forest’s A.T. Perry and a Fresno State guy, who had an excellent week himself, in Jalen Cropper). However, I thought this kid from Coastal Carolina more than held his own against all those guys.

Boykin showcased impressive hip mobility all week, flipping around by 180 degrees after opening up with vertical stems a couple of times. And he didn’t allow guys to detach vertically from him either. Yet, on the front-end of those reps, he was able to land some forceful one-handed stabs in press, to throw off receivers that way, while having to mirror more delayed releases.

They were doing some release drills on day three, where he simply blanketed multiple guys attempting to get to the edges of his frame, once making one of the tight-ends basically give up and just stop.

Boykin played sticky coverage throughout day three and put together a really strong showing. He might’ve even been better during the last practice session, not surrendering a single completion and showing several impressive moments of anticipating routes and having guys try to go through him.

His very last rep of the entire week (where they were just going one-on-one a final time) Boykin made defending a curl route by Georgia’s Kearis Jackson look easy, wrapping around and knocking the ball down. I would say there was maybe a small acclimation period during the first practice, but from day two on, he was arguably the top CB of the entire event. And he didn’t give receivers much breathing room during the actual game either.