With the 71st pick the Chicago Bears draft Jalyn Armour-Davis
Then with the 71st pick, this mock draft has the Chicago Bears drafting an under-the-radar cornerback who only started one season for the Crimson Tide’s cornerback factory in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The cornerback is Jalyn Armour-Davis. Both Chris Simms as well as Bootleg Football’s Brett Kollman see him as a real sleeper with great potential. Here is a link to an interview between Chris Simms and Jalyn Armour-Davis where they both make a strong case for a team like the Bears to draft him.
Armour-Davis could easily be a real steal for the Bears once he gets a little more polish to his game. This refinement should add the consistency he currently lacks to his often very good press man cover game.
His measurables perfectly complement partnering with Jaylon Johnson as the Bears’ boundary corners as he has the speed and height the Chicago Bears CB1 lacks. Armour-Davis has 4.39 speed and stands at 6’1″ and weighs in at 197 lbs. He can play in the cover 2 but his specialty is press man coverage.
My understanding is that Eberflus will not be satisfied with a cornerback who is limited to playing in zone coverage. Armour-Davis’s best football is ahead of him. What the turnover hungry Matt Eberfluss should also really like is he has ball skills as Armour-Davis used to play wide receiver. In his only season starting at Alabama he tied for the team lead with three interceptions.
Chris Simms ranked him as the third-best cornerback in this draft. This is way higher than every other draft evaluator I have seen. For myself, Chris Simms draft evaluations have been extremely helpful in good part for this reason. When he digs deep into tape he goes into his evaluations without any prior bias.
It is only when he comes out of the other side of burying himself in tape that he seeks others’ opinions. I believe that bias prior to fully evaluating prospects has proven to be one of the biggest reasons evaluators miss on prospects. It is easy to get caught up in group think and Chris Simms does not have that flaw in evaluating prospects. This is no doubt why Simms concluded Jalyn Armour-Davis is the third-best corner in this draft.