Grant
Delpit.
Grant
Delpit.
LSU· 6'2"· 213 lb
"The best safety in college football as a sophomore and a tackling argument as a junior: the range and the blitz timing never left, but the ankle and the strike technique turned an early-first-round grade into a round-two debate."Pre-draft read
Big, rangy safety LSU moved between the deep post, the slot and the nickel blitz package, and the versatility is genuine rather than a staff talking point. He reads route concepts early from depth, drives downhill on the throw and covers ground laterally with long strides; as a blitzer he times the snap and bends around the edge like an undersized rusher.
The secondary trait is instinct in zone: he passes off routes cleanly and baits quarterbacks into throws he is already breaking on. The concern is the finish. He arrives with speed but drops his head and slings an arm at contact rather than wrapping, and the junior tape is full of misses in space that his sophomore tape did not have.
A two-high shell that rotates late and uses simulated pressure, so his coverage range and blitz timing both stay on the field.
Year 1: three-down starting safety with a designed pressure package. Ceiling: an All-Pro-level chess piece who takes the ball away and rushes on third down.
A run-first box role in a heavy front that asks him to take on pulling guards and make tackles between the tackles on every early down.
Keep him at depth and let him play forward; putting him in the box on first down wastes the trait and exposes the frame.
Grant Delpit 2018 Season Highlights - LSU Football
The unanimous All-America sophomore year: five sacks, five interceptions and the full range of alignments.
LSU Safety Grant Delpit 2018 Highlights
Deep-half range and blitz timing from the season that produced the early-first-round grade.
The Best Safety In College Football - Grant Delpit 2018 Highlights
Coverage instincts in zone and the downhill triggers that defined his peak tape.
Delpit is a long, fluid safety with true scheme versatility and a two-season body of work that most boards considered elite before a junior year complicated it. He played the deep half, dropped into the box, matched tight ends from the slot and rushed off the edge for LSU, and he did all of it with the anticipation of a player who knows the concept before the ball is snapped.
The sophomore season in 2018 was the peak: 74 tackles, five sacks and five interceptions with nine passes defended, earning unanimous All-America honors and the Jack Tatum Award. He played through a high ankle sprain during LSU's 2019 national championship run and the tape reflected it, with 65 tackles, two interceptions and a tackling reliability that slipped badly enough to become the defining talking point of his evaluation. He still won the Thorpe Award as the nation's best defensive back. Across three seasons he totaled 199 tackles, 24 passes defended, eight interceptions and seven sacks.
Boards were split between the player from 2018 and the missed tackles from 2019, which is why an early-first-round talent lasted into the second. Cleveland, rebuilding a secondary under a new staff, took him 44th and bet the ankle was the explanation.
- 01
Coverage range
reads the concept from depth, breaks on the throw early and covers width in the deep half with long, efficient strides.
- 02
Positional versatility
legitimate reps at free safety, in the box, over the slot and as an edge blitzer, which lets a coordinator disguise everything.
- 03
Blitz timing
five sacks as a sophomore came from snap anticipation and the ability to bend a corner, a rare pressure tool from the safety spot.
- 04
Ball production
eight career interceptions and 24 passes defended in three seasons, with the hands and tracking of a converted receiver.
- 05
Football intelligence
communicates and rotates coverages pre-snap and is the player a defense can build its checks around from day one.
- 01
Tackling technique
drops his head and shoulder-checks instead of wrapping, and the junior-year miss rate in open space was the loudest flag on the tape.
- 02
Play strength
listed near 200 pounds on a 6-3 frame and gets displaced by tight ends and pulling guards when asked to play as a true box defender.
- 03
Ankle history
the high ankle sprain that dragged through 2019 raises the question of how much of the down year was health and how much was decline.
- 04
Inconsistent angles
over-aggressive downhill triggers occasionally take him out of the fit and turn a modest run into an explosive one.
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | LSU | — | 60 | 0 | 1 | 8 | 0 |
| 2018 | LSU | — | 74 | 5 | 5 | 9 | 1 |
| 2019 | LSU | — | 65 | 2 | 2 | 7 | 1 |
| Career | — | — | 199 | 7 | 8 | 24 | 2 |
Season sums match the career line on tackles (199), sacks (7), interceptions (8) and passes defended (24). Per-season games and tackles for loss are not published as splits — LSU lists 26 games with 23 starts through 2018 and 13.0 combined TFL over those two years — so those cells are left blank rather than estimated.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Reliable every-down two-high starter with real ball skills and a long run as a defensive communicator.
The versatile blitz-and-cover safety who becomes the identity of the defense and pressures the quarterback from depth.
Athletic safety whose tackling reliability and durability keep him from ever locking down a full-time role.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
The start could not have been worse: he tore his Achilles in training camp and missed the entire 2020 season. He came back to start 15 games in 2021 and then settled into the job for good, posting 94 tackles with a career-best four interceptions and 10 passes defended in 2022, and he has been Cleveland's every-down safety since, adding a three-year extension in December 2023. He had 70 tackles in 13 games in 2023 while the defense led the NFL in total and passing yards allowed, a career-high tackle total that led the team in 2024, and 80 tackles with three sacks, two forced fumbles and an interception in 2025. Through Week 2 of 2026 he has 80 career games, 412 tackles, 7.5 sacks, 22 passes defended and seven interceptions.
The pick worked, with a caveat. The tackling that scared teams off in 2019 has never fully cleaned up — he is still a hitter more than a wrapper, and the misses show up in bad weeks — but the range, the blitz value and the availability after the Achilles have made him a six-year starter on good defenses. What he has not become is the 2018 version who takes the ball away five times a season; the ball production flattened after 2022. For the 44th pick, a durable starting safety with a handful of high-impact seasons is a clear return.
Data note: from Indianapolis