Thirty-five Defensive Backs are better than Desmond King, according to the draft results. That’s not what many of us saw over his illustrious Hawkeye career. Since he started his second game on campus, I felt he had a track record of shutting down high-quality wideouts.

Yet, a dive into the numbers shows a surprising account of these wide receivers performing well against Iowa and by proxy, Desmond King. Though most of this stems from Iowa’s scheme, which 1) doesn’t force any corner to line up mano-a-mano with a particular wideout and 2) is willing to give up 5-10 yard gains to limit big plays, the list is still pretty surprising.

2013

Des’ freshman season actually coincided with the most NFL receivers he faced in a single year:

You can certainly tell throughout 2013, that King was being targeted far more than in later years. The highlight is probably Iowa’s secondary holding LSU’s NFL tandem of Jarvis Landry and Odell Beckham in check. Additionally, who would have known Corey Davis was a top 5 pick in the making, as he did almost nothing. All told, only 4 NFL wideouts got TDs against Iowa despite being 12, in total.

2014

It was a light year, in terms of NFL receivers. Though a trend begins to develop as King receives less action since his tackles don’t match receptions for Tyler Boyd or Stefon Diggs.

2015

King’s junior year was arguably his best, as he accumulated a Hawkeye-record 8 interceptions on his way to the Jim Thorpe Award. Pittsburgh’s Nathan Peterman tried his luck going to Tyler Boyd twice when King was defending him, resulting in two first quarter interceptions. After that, Boyd feasted against defenders not named Desmond King

2016

Des’ stats below show, frankly, a complete avoidance of him. To accumulate only 18 tackles and 2 passes defended is surprising against this group. Only 1 TD was completed against him all year.

So, What Does It Mean?

Frankly, Rob Donaldson is more qualified than I am to talk about what it means:

The admittedly quick breeze through the numbers demonstrates the concerns about King in terms of being a “scheme” corner as he never went up against WR1’s with regularity to shut them down. Instead, his half of the field was avoided, irrespective of which receiver occupied it. Rob added in our group chat:

This past season, Iowa played a lot more cover 3 in an attempt to mask [bad safety play]. However, doing that gave up a lot of underneath YAC opportunities for guys. King stuck to the left virtually every snap, which means he wasn't consistently going up against the top guys and [Greg] Mabin just isn't that great of a player, so when he was left on an island [Mabin] struggled.

All-in-all, it shows King to be elite in terms of executing the scheme he lived in Iowa City. It was a rare occurrence for him to get beat over the top and he missed very few tackles when the ball did go his way. I echo Rob’s tweets and expect him to perform way above his draft pick, making everyone who didn’t watch him 4 years look foolish.