Second and third-year NFL players ready to break out in 2019

#14 Gareon Conley

Nobody I think moved up and down the board more before and during the 2017 draft than Gareon Conley ahead of his actual selection. I feel like he started off as a second-round pick, but after a strong combine, he moved up into people’s first-round mock draft and was discussed as a potential top 15 pick before his status was unclear due to sexual assault charges, until the Raiders finally did surprisingly draft him 24th overall.

While he has stayed out of trouble off the field, the organization hasn’t been very happy with him these first two years. As a rookie, Conley showed up at training camp with a shin injury and only appeared in two games before being put on IR for the season. Last year he only was on the field for about two-thirds of the defensive snaps due to banged up hip, but I thought he showed some promise.

Coming out of Ohio State together with running Marshon Lattimore, who wounded up winning Defensive Rookie of the Year, I had Conley is a definite first-rounder. I thought he was very fluid for his size, had a good combination of 4.4 speed and 33-inch arms and was oftentimes in that CB1 role for the Buckeyes, presenting excellent range and ball-skills from a wide receiver background in high school.

However, I thought he would need some time to develop, especially when you looked at his horrendous hand usage at Ohio State, using weak punches from a flat-footed position when trying to jam receivers if he didn’t allow free releases in general.

Of course, these injuries have slowed some of that development down, but if he can finally stay healthy this year, I think he could the number one guy for a defense that clearly wants to utilize man-heavy schemes if you look the personnel they have acquired recently. When I went back and watched Conley play the Steelers in week 14 last season, he allowed just three catches for 26 yards to AB and JuJu and two of those came on screens.