One article after another praises Gonzalez. Cosell praises him here. Bewildering how he slid
SCOUTING REPORT By Greg Cosell
Background:
Gonzalez played one year at Oregon after spending his first two years at Colorado. He came out of Texas as a 4-star recruit. In 2022 at Oregon, Gonzalez was First Team All-Pac 12
Gonzalez played left and right corner, and he aligned both to the boundary and to the field. He has extensive experience playing press coverage and off coverage. There were snaps in which he was deployed as a blitzer when aligned as the boundary corner. There were snaps throughout the season Gonzalez lined up in the slot (138 snaps, against Utah he played significant snaps in the slot), and there were also snaps in which he played back-end safety.
Gonzalez was beaten in press man by Stanford WR Michael Wilson, who effectively used a swipe-arm-over move to get him off-balance and out of phase. Overall, Gonzalez-Wilson was a good matchup with Gonzalez, winning some physical press man reps as the game progressed.
Positives:
Experience playing outside and the slot; Outside-inside flexibility; Predominantly played outside in 2022.
Long, fluid outside corner with easy transition and change of direction; Loose hips and quick feet, Smooth as silk.
Patient and composed in mirror match press man; Waited for receiver to declare release before reacting.
Played both mirror match and physical press man efficiently; Strong, active hands to disrupt routes off the LOS.
Press man snaps in which he physically drove the receiver out of bounds removing him as an option for the QB.
In mirror match press man, did an excellent job squeezing receivers to the sideline, taking away their space.
Flipped his hips in press man matching vertical routes with easy strides; Speed to stay comfortably in phase.
Plant and drive burst in off coverage; Quick transition from pedal with no wasted steps; Stride length a factor.
Played with assignment, alignment discipline and good eyes in zone coverage; Read route combinations.
Competitive as a tackler on the outside; Squared up on balance; Willing to play physically when demanded.
Negatives:
At times in press man got back on his heels negatively impacting balance; Tendency to reach to compensate.
Some routes in which he lost contact with the receiver at the top of the route stem, then had to recover.
There were times in press man he had to take too many steps to stop when the receiver broke off his route.
Needs to win more at moment of truth; Too many plays he had outstanding coverage and did not play the ball.
Bottom Line:
Gonzalez is one of the best corner prospects in the 2023 NFL draft, and he projects and transitions to the NFL very well given his overall traits and skill set to line up at boundary corner in the NFL and match the big-time boundary x receivers man-to-man in press coverage. Gonzalez has the length that is desired at outside corner in the NFL, and he is as smooth and fluid as they come, with the easy ability to flip his hips and change direction, plus the long speed to comfortably run with vertical routes out of press position. Gonzalez also played with a physical, competitive edge, disrupting routes off the LOS and driving receivers into the sideline.
Overall, Gonzalez has extensive experience playing mirror match press and physical press man, in addition to multiple zone concepts, and he showed efficiency in all coverage concepts. He also brings the flexibility to line up in the slot when needed (which he did for more than 100 snaps in 2022), so you have a corner with outstanding physical and athletic traits to play outside who can move inside as well. Few corners have his size/length/speed/fluidity/competitiveness profile, and it would not surprise me if he came off the board in the top 10 of the first round of the draft.