The Pittsburgh Steelers brought quite a few cornerbacks in for pre-draft visits during the month of April and one of the smaller ones, Temple product Tavon Young, let it be known during a Thursday interview on ESPN 980 in Washington, D.C. that he really enjoyed his visit with the black and gold the most.
“Just meeting with the coaches, just watching my film and putting people’s plays to it,” said Young, who registered 126 total tackles and 7 interceptions during his college career. “Just learning the playbook and just learning what the NFL’s like.”
Young, who measures in at 5091, 183-pounds, was later asked what he’s hearing from teams prior to the draft as it relates to areas where they would like to see him improve.
“The main thing they always say is probably just getting stronger,” said Young. “You know you can never be too strong and being the smaller corner that I am, strength will always help me because I’m not the tall prototype that everybody expects. I just have to be strong on the field.”
While Young is indeed one of the smaller cornerbacks in this year’s draft class, he’s certainly not the slowest. Back at the 2016 NFL Combine he ran his 40-yard dash in 4.46 seconds and posted a short shuttle time of 3.93 seconds. Even so, Young believes he has other strengths outside of just his speed when asked to talk about what his gives him an advantage over his competition.
“I would just say my attitude and film study, and my technique,” Young said. “I always work my craft with my coaches and by myself. I’m studying the film all the time. Like during game week, I’m always in the film room with my other cornerbacks, or probably just watching by myself sometimes. And when I’m on the field I just compete no matter what.”
The Steelers are expected to take at least one cornerback in this year’s draft and as we saw one year ago, they certainly aren’t scared of taking undersized players at that position as evidenced by the selection of Senquez Golson in the second round.
Against Notre Dame last season, Young really caught some eyes for the way he limited wide receiver Will Fuller in that game.
“I just knew I wasn’t going to back down and I knew I wasn’t going to let him do what he did to other people,” Young said in an interview a few weeks ago on SiriusXM NFL.
As far as him failing to register an interception last season. Young said that teams shouldn’t be concerned about that because he dropped three of them and caught another one out of bounds. Additionally, he said opposing teams stopped throwing his way after Temple played Notre Dame.
Young is expected to be drafted somewhere during the fourth or fifth round next weekend and it will be interesting to see if he’s ultimately selected by the Steelers.
