CB JAYCEE HORN
Height: 6’1 “
Weight: 205 pounds
Class: Junior
School: South Carolina
A former four-star recruit from Alpharetta, Georgia, where he was the 26th ranked Georgian recruit in the class of 2018. Horn has accumulated impressive statistics in South Carolina; in his three years, he had 101 tackles, 7 for a loss, three sacks, two interceptions and 23 saved passes.
Pro Football Focus has him as the third best cornerback entering the NFL’s 2021 Draft, behind only Patrick Surtain II of Alabama and Caleb Farley of Virginia Tech. By his metric, Horn was 28th in overall coverage in 2020 and only allowed eight receptions on 24 targets for 116 yards in the seven games played.
Notable
He chose to leave the 2020 season after seven games to prepare for the draft. He is the son of four-time Pro-Bowl wide receiver Joe Horn, who was famous for pulling a cell phone from under the beam during a Monday night football game against the Giants and pretended to make a call after scoring a touchdown.
Traces
Horn is a long physical cornerback, of good size and excellent athletic ability. He is fast, has very fluid hips to rotate and his lateral movement skills are impressive – he can rotate and close the width with excellent short area burst.
It is mainly a border corner, but it also did repetitions in the slot. The posture can be a little high at times, and your center of gravity at the line of scrimmage can improve if I am thorough.
He is generally solid on the scrimmage line on the man’s cover. He is very good at applying the internal jam and turn situations and showed the ability to fold his hands, remember and get an advantageous position, which is a good sign of his playing strength. It usually does a good job of staying in line, moving into the receptors’ hips and compromising their hips as soon as the receiver declares its route.
I saw missteps on the tape and saw Horn open his gate a little earlier too, but he was not very consistent in his game. It does a solid job of pushing receivers into the sideline and reacting quickly to backward throws. His excellent ability to change direction helps him against wide shiftier receivers near the border as well.
Good on the horizontal coverage of the man when he follows the inner part of the hip and positions himself to interrupt the meeting point. He can hook up loud at times and draw flags – he has to lower his outer hand to soften this type of clothing. He holds up well in the wide receivers phase, and his athletic ability makes him very valuable in forcing incompleteness.
He plays with good vision in the coverage zone, leaves the routes while looking at the defender and attacks with good timing and excellent aggression. Has good mental processing when in the coverage area and uses good visual discipline.
The skills with the ball are very good in terms of interruption. He is very controlled with his hands and technique at the meeting point to prevent easy conclusions – this was shown a lot against Seth Williams and Auburn in 2020.
He plays with great competitive toughness and loves his jaw. He’s solid on the race stand and plays with solid playing strength. He is aggressive and has some intriguing highlights in which opponents dominate at this stage, but he is not very consistent and he has lost several tackles.
Overall, Horn is a potential selection in the first round that brings the man coverage capacity for a defense, as well as a ton of physicality. He must be an impact player in the National Football League.
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