Trivia question –

In the last five years, 20 cornerbacks have been selected in the first round of the NFL draft. How many have come out of the Big 12?

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The answer is one. Jeff Gladney out of TCU, who went to the Minnesota Vikings with the 31st pick in the 2020 draft.

Otherwise, you see the list littered with guys from Bama, LSU, Ohio State, etc. Big programs with big time defenses. Not even Oklahoma and Texas are sending cornerbacks to the NFL with any kind of consistency, even though they dominate recruiting in one of America’s most fertile regions.

With respect to Zech McPhearson, yes, he did transfer from Penn State, where he played under defensive coordinator Brent Pry. He did technically start his career as a Big 10 player, but saw limited action behind Amani Oruwariye, John Reid, and Donovan Johnson in 2018, and then found his way to Lubbock, playing for Keith Patterson, who came over from Utah State along with head coach Matt Wells when Kliff Kingsbury took off for the NFL.

Patterson has Big 12 ties, having served as a DC and co-DC at West Virginia for two seasons, which were not good. WVU went 7-6 in 2012 and then 4-8 in 2013, and Patterson left to take the same job at Arizona State, where his defenses were absolutely atrocious.

He installed a bullshit Big 12 defense in Lubbock, that 3-3-5 odd stack that plays smaller and faster and tries to disguise pressure while falling back on three-man rush and drop-eight zone. It’s the same scheme that Rasul Douglas excelled in at WVU, which never totally translated when he was picked by the Eagles in the third round.

Here’s a look at one of the common things you’d see at Tech or WV:

3-3-5 stack, with McPhearson playing on the outside at the top of the screen.

You’ve got three down linemen, with an undersized nose tackle who functions as a double-A gap space eater. Oftentimes they bring a tweener linebacker or a spur safety down to the line to make it play like a 4-2-5, and get that extra rusher in there. You can mix and match when it comes to bringing pressure by sending that extra LB, or safety, or a corner, or whomever. It’s an odd but flexible defense, and you see it frequently in the Big 12 as a way to combat these potent passing attacks, which ends up becoming more about mitigation than prevention. There’s a LOT of bending in the Big 12, and unfortunately also a lot of breaking, because the recruiting is so heavily skewed towards the offensive side of the ball that defense is almost a foregone conclusion. That’s how a guy like McPhearson can go from barely sniffing the field in Happy Valley to team captain in Lubbock.

One of the problems with this scheme is that you can barely generate pass rush against half decent offensive lines. So in a lot of these Big 12 games you’re stuck watching these excruciating possessions where the QB sits there all day and the CBs have to defend for 5-7 seconds, which is nearly impossible.

In this case, on the play above, Baylor QB Charlie Brewer makes a bad throw into the zone and McPhearson is there:

Bad throw, good snag by McPhearson, but nothing other corners in that same position wouldn’t be able to do. Rasul had a handful of these kinds of plays in Morgantown, which is why his interception numbers were so good.

The rest of the interceptions and fumble recoveries on McPhearson’s tape are not impressive. One fumble recovery is a blocked kick and he’s the only one with five yards of where the ball lands. Another came off a horrible back-foot throw from OSU’s Spencer Sanders. The pick in the Houston Baptist game came on a pass that the fucking running back threw, which was tipped by a lineman and knocked up into the air. And the other fumble recovery was against WV, where two teammates stripped the ball and he was in the right place at the right time. There just wasn’t a lot on tape with the picks or fumble recoveries that wows you.

Here’s a much better sequence from McPhearson:

It’s 3rd and 3, off coverage, four-man rush, and a great break on the ball. That’s the kind of stuff he’s going to be doing more of at the NFL level, and when you see stuff like this on tape you get excited, because it’s translatable to the pro game and isn’t part of some gimmicky Big 12 scheme.

I’m not sure if you care about how good a team is, vs. how an individual shows up on tape, but Texas Tech has been turrible over the last two seasons. Just eight wins and 14 losses. Their offense isn’t what it used to be, obviously with guys like Patrick Mahomes and Davis Webb long gone, but the defense has been dismal since Wells and Patterson took over. They gave up 33 at home to Houston Baptist this year. 63 at home to Texas. K-State and Iowa State, who aren’t offensive juggernauts, scored 31 each. They even gave up 37 to Kansas last year. In a draft where the Eagles finally took a couple of dudes from Bama, its unfathomable to think that you are going to TEXAS TECH of all places to fill a defensive position of dire need.

And look, I hope Zech McPhearson does well. I hope this article ends up being completely wrong. I want to end up on Freezing Cold Takes as McPhearson heads to his second-straight Pro Bowl in 2024. The best case scenario is that he goes on to become the next D.J. Reed or Tre Flowers, i.e. mid-draft Big 12 guys who find their way in the NFL as complementary pieces despite having relatively average grades going into the draft.

Maybe it’s PTSD after watching a lot of horrendous Big 12 football, but I just cannot trust any cornerback coming out of this conference.