Analysis: Did the Raiders reach for Damon Arnette in the first round?

By Mike Grimala (contact)

Saturday, April 25, 2020 | 2 a.m.

Raiders general manager Mike Mayock said he doesn’t think drafting Damon Arnette at No. 19 overall on Thursday was a reach, but the move certainly sent fans reaching for their draft magazines to look up more info on a player who was widely projected as a Day 2 pick.

Arnette, a 6-foot cornerback, played the 2019 season in the shadow of Ohio State teammate Jeff Okudah, who manned the same position and went No. 3 overall to the Detroit Lions. With Okudah drawing most of the hype during the pre-draft process, Arnette flew under the radar — until the Raiders called his name in the first round.

So did Las Vegas reach for Arnette? That question is impossible to answer because we’ll never know how other NFL teams had him graded. If there was just one other team that valued Arnette as a first-round pick, then that means the Raiders were right to pounce when they did. But teams never cop to their internal draft boards, either before or after the draft, so that will remain unknowable.

What will be determined on the field, however, is whether Arnette can give the Raiders first-round value as a player. The team is heading into 2020 with a huge need at cornerback, and as a productive, five-year college prospect, we can infer that Las Vegas expects Arnette to step in right away as a starter.

In going back and watching Arnette’s play as a senior in 2019, the first word that comes to mind to describe him is scrappy. He is a fighter in every sense of the word. He doesn’t possess the fantastic physical gifts of longer, faster corners like Okudah and Florida’s C.J. Henderson, but Arnette gives first-round effort on every play.

He is at his most comfortable when playing up on the line of scrimmage and pressing receivers; he is very handsy and likes to keep physical contact with receivers for the entire length of their routes. That pestering style of play can annoy opponents, but it also tends to draw penalty flags:

Arnette’s best trait is his relentlessness at the point of the catch. When it’s time to make a play on the ball, he will scratch and claw and fight until the receiver has secured the ball five times over. In watching video of Arnette from 2019, it was striking how few easy, uncontested completions he allowed.

When he is locked into coverage, he bats balls away and knocks them out of receivers’ hands even after they’ve assumed the catch is completed:

In the first clip of that video, Arnette is playing in the Big Ten championship game despite a broken wrist and he uses his cast hand to arm-bar the receiver. He then goes for the one-handed interception with his working arm. That never-give-up attitude is addictive to coaches and probably the biggest reason why Mayock and Jon Gruden fell in love with Arnette.

“He’s tough as nails,” Mayock said of Arnette. “When you talk about competitors, he played most of the season with a cast on his arm.”

Arnette’s physicality is evident in everything he does. He rides receivers all the way across the field on inside routes (sometimes to his detriment, in the judgment of the officials), he muscles them to the boundary on outside routes, he fights through the catch point and he likes to hit.

His tackling was sound in 2019. He laid the wood on several occasions, and though he missed some tackles in space (mostly by diving at ankles) he generally found a way to get the man on the ground. That skill should translate to the NFL and it’s another hard-nosed trait that coaches tend to love:

Arnette is at his most comfortable when he has his hands on the receiver, which is why he tries to always keep his hands on the receiver. But when he can’t do that — when he misses a jam or is asked to play off coverage, for instance — his footwork can get exposed by quicker receivers.

There were more than a few examples of Arnette getting turned around, off-balance or just out of position when left in space in 2019:

After digging into video of Arnette’s 2019 season it’s understandable why the Raiders became enamored with him. The team wants two solid, physical corners to press receivers, and Arnette fits into that scheme.

And then there’s the scrap factor. He’s just a scrappy dude. He hits receivers, he pesters them, he gets into shoving matches after almost every play that involves him and he never gives up on the field. Mayock and Gruden have demonstrated that they’re willing to draft character over pure talent, and Arnette seems to be an example of that philosophy.

According to Pro Football Focus, Arnette allowed opposing quarterbacks to post a passer rating of 60.6 when targeting him in 2019, and he allowed just one touchdown on 56 targets (with one interception). He’s not a tremendous playmaker, but he is physical at all times and makes opponents earn every inch of the field. A good NFL comparison might be Tennessee Titans cornerback Malcolm Butler, who has overcome size and speed issues through sheer will and toughness to become one of the league’s more reliable cover men.

In an ideal world, you’d probably like to draft Arnette in the second round and pencil him in as your No. 2 cornerback for the next four years, but the Raiders clearly bumped him up the board due to his play style and intangibles. Arnette will get beaten by quickness at times and he’ll draw his share of penalty flags, but his toughness and attitude will likely grow on fans with every pass he knocks down.

Mike Grimala can be reached at 702-948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Mike on Twitter at twitter.com/mikegrimala.