INDIANAPOLIS — Caleb Downs and Kenyon Sadiq played it cool Thursday at the NFL’s annual scouting combine.
Rather than brag about sitting atop their respective positional rankings — Downs at safety and Sadiq at tight end — for April’s NFL draft in Pittsburgh, the two All-Americans spoke confidently about simply what they could add next fall.
At this stage, there’s no real debate about where Downs and Sadiq stand. The only real question is how long they’ll be waiting on the first night of the draft to see where they end up, largely because of the league’s tendency to undervalue both positions.
“I don’t know how other teams see it. Frankly, we don’t care how other teams see it,” said Baltimore Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta, who has spent two recent first-round picks on safeties: Kyle Hamilton at No. 14 in 2022 and Malaki Starks at No. 27 last year. “We didn’t go into the 2022 draft thinking Kyle Hamilton was going to be the best player available when we picked, and he happened to be the best player available, and thank God he was.”
Hamilton responded by quickly establishing himself as one of the league’s most gifted playmakers, a group many scouts expect Downs to join soon after he spent the past three seasons starring at two of college football’s powerhouses: Alabama and Ohio State.