NFL Draft
4/1/25
7 min read
2025 NFL Draft: Stop Sleeping on Penn State Safety Kevin Winston Jr.
Penn State safety Kevin Winston Jr. began the 2024 season as a potential first-round pick, but after tearing his ACL in Week 2, it seems most have completely forgotten about him.
An early September ACL tear is unlikely to present a serious red flag for NFL teams, but Winston Jr.’s injury has indirectly hurt his draft stock. He missed out on a year’s worth of tape and didn’t have an opportunity to establish himself as a first-round prospect.
With that being said, few safeties in this class have anything on their resume that compares to Winston Jr.’s 2023 tape, and a player of his talent can only fall so far in one year. He’s the 37th-ranked player on my big board, and while there is a gap between Winston Jr. and Malaki Starks/ Nick Emmanwori, I don’t think it’s massive.
Despite receiving the coverage of a Day 3 pick, I expect him to be selected in the top 50.
A four-star recruit in the class of 2022, Winston Jr. played a reserve role in his first year before securing a starting job as a true sophomore. In 2023, Winston Jr. proved himself as a top-tier safety prospect, producing some of the most consistent tape I’ve ever seen from a college safety, particularly in run support.
He led Penn State defenders with 46 total tackles and posted an unheard-of zero percent missed tackle rate. He’s one of just two FBS safeties since at least 2014 to play 350+ snaps and miss zero tackles.
While he’s a brick wall in run support, his coverage instincts still need development, and his modest ball production (one interception/three pass breakups for his career) is indicative of his lack of feel for the passing game. His injury deprived him of the opportunity to prove himself in coverage, so projecting him as a three-down impact player requires somewhat of a leap of faith.
At the combine, Winston Jr. measured in at 6014, 215 pounds with 32 ½-inch arms. With height, weight, and arm length all above the 78th percentile, he has a pro-ready physical profile.
Considering he’s less than six months removed from ACL surgery, it would have been understandable if he elected not to test, but at Penn State’s pro day, he ran a 4.51 in the 40-yard dash, verifying his speed and his health. His 1.51 10-yard split would have been the best among combine safeties.
RUN DEFENSE
Winston Jr. is an excellent run defender with the ideal size, play strength, and demeanor to play in the box. He's a tone-setter who fires into the alley with conviction and greets runners at the line of scrimmage.
With his physical ability to thump between the tackles and his range to flow from sideline to sideline, he has the run-stopping ability of a WILL linebacker. His skill set gives his defensive coordinator the flexibility to play lighter personnel but defend the run like he’s in base.
Winston Jr. weaponizes his length to discard blocks and stay clean in run support. He consistently establishes first contact and attacks oncoming blockers with heavy hands to prevent them from latching onto his frame.
When his opponent does connect, he has a strong lower half and outstanding contact balance to stay upright and in the play:
As previously mentioned, he had one of the best tackling performances in modern college football history as a sophomore, going the entire season without a single miss. Winston Jr. has the perfect blend of violence and balance as a tackler. He takes smart pursuit angles, settles his feet, and breaks down with consistent mechanics, but there’s nothing passive about his technique.
He explodes into contact and delivers ferocious hits with enough stopping power to prevent the ball carrier from falling forward. His length also increases his margin for error and allows him to secure ankle tackles when he isn’t able to square up his target.
COVERAGE
Unsurprisingly, Winston Jr. is a dominant presence in underneath coverage. He rapidly diagnoses screens, checkdowns, or quick game concepts and triggers downhill to make plays near the line of scrimmage.
The skills and traits that make him such an effective run defender allow him to suffocate the offense’s short passing game.
He has good speed to close out to the flat and urgently cut off the ball carrier’s angle to the edge. He’s a decisive enough top-down processor that he rarely finds himself out of position, but he has the pursuit speed to recapture leverage when he needs to. Most tight ends and receivers aren’t equipped to block a player with his level of physicality and shed strength, and he easily avoids or detaches from perimeter blocks.
This is also where his reliability as a tackler is most valuable. A lot of safeties can fly downhill at max speed from depth and get from point A to point B quickly, but very few are able to control their throttle and come to balance to mirror the ball carrier when he changes directions.
With such a long runway from his deep alignment to his underneath target, the runner has plenty of time to diagnose the pursuit angle and veer in the opposite direction to evade the tackle. However, Winston Jr. has the reactive athleticism to make quick adjustments in the open field, and his length gives him an expanded tackle net to connect to his target when he isn’t perfectly centered.
He wasn’t asked to play man coverage very often, but he flashed potential as a tight end eraser. He can match the size and physicality of tight ends, and with some technical development, he has the length to be a weapon in press coverage:
He occasionally gets caught with his eyes in the backfield and is late to turn and run with his assignment, but he’s so composed at the catch point that he can recover from an early mistake.
Ideally, a defensive back would be able to turn and locate the football every time they get targeted, but if the receiver has a couple of steps of vertical separation, they usually can’t afford to turn their head.
When Winston Jr. is forced to faceguard with his back to the quarterback, he does a great job of reading the receiver’s body language and raking at the ball with perfect timing:
Despite his dominance within 20 yards, Winston Jr. isn’t instinctive in deep zone coverage. He’s indecisive and slow to read the field, often taking too many false steps and covering grass instead of anticipating passing lanes. As a robber/poach safety, he doesn’t process passing concepts quickly enough to drive on in-breaking routes in time to play the ball.
He has plenty of range but doesn’t have the necessary field vision to identify hole shots in split-safety coverage. His lack of feel in deep coverage didn’t result in many busts, but it significantly limited his production and overall impact. He's young and inexperienced, so there’s a good chance his anticipation develops with more reps. However, that will likely require a lot of seasoning, as he doesn’t seem to be a natural playmaker.
Becoming an instinctive and anticipatory playmaker is much easier said than done, so Winston Jr. reaching his upside is a total coin flip, but he’s far from a boom-bust prospect.
Even if he never develops into a ball-hawk in deep coverage, he still has an incredibly high floor as a box safety, and he can absolutely carve out a role as a starter solely based on what he provides in run support.
In a pass-first league, I don’t think you can apply that logic to every one-dimensional run-stopping safety, and it’s important to make the distinction between Winston Jr. and other box safeties with “coverage limitations.”
Winston Jr.’s weaknesses in coverage result in him not generating turnovers. They don’t result in him getting beat or allowing explosive plays. While he would be classified as a “run support specialist,” he’s good in single coverage and isn’t a player that opposing offenses can exploit.
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