Charles McDonald says Georgia defensive back Daylen Everette may be better suited for safety in the NFL than for cornerback, pointing to the way the four-year starter developed late in his college career. On the Yahoo Sports podcast Football 301, McDonald said Everette, a five-star cornerback coming out of high school, had the athletic traits to draw that kind of projection even if his coverage game was uneven at times.
McDonald said it took Everette a couple of years to get going at cornerback, but that he really showed out over the last year and a half of his Georgia career. He said the defender stood out especially once Georgia started playing Texas in the SEC, where the pace and matchups helped reveal what he could do. McDonald also said he watched every game Everette played in college, giving his assessment the weight of someone who had followed the progression from the start.
The view matters because it is not coming from a team decision or an on-field transaction. It is one analyst’s read on where Everette may fit next, built on a season-by-season look at how his game changed. McDonald said Everette’s athleticism was what got him ranked so high in high school, and that his traits were more geared toward moving forward, blitzing and breaking down on passes than playing pure cornerback.
That leaves the tension in the profile: Everette was recruited as a five-star corner, started for four years and finished strong, yet McDonald still called the cornerback part of his game “a little shaky.” That is why he floated a move to safety as the cleaner NFL fit, framing it as a personal projection after a full college watch rather than any official evaluation from Georgia or a pro team.
For Everette, the next step is the draft conversation itself. If teams agree with McDonald’s read, his late surge at Georgia could push him toward a different role on the next level. If they do not, the debate over whether he is a corner or a safety will become one more test of how NFL scouts value traits against position-specific polish.
