Shaun
Bradley.
Shaun
Bradley.
Temple· 6'1"· 235 lb· 4.51s 40
"A single-digit captain at Temple who plays the weak side at full speed, closes downhill before blockers can reach him, and covers kicks like a gunner."Pre-draft read
Bradley plays the weak side behind a three-man front and wins with trigger speed. He reads the backfield first, and once the ball declares he closes in a straight line, arriving at the hole before pulling linemen can wall him off. He finishes in the open field, wrapping and driving through contact instead of diving at ankles.
The secondary trait is escapability: rather than stacking a blocker and shedding him, he drops his pad level late and slips around the block on an unorthodox angle, which keeps him clean in backside pursuit. In coverage he is best carrying a back out of the backfield or sitting in a hook zone with his eyes on the quarterback. The signature separator is kick coverage, where he is routinely first down the field.
Three-man front that keeps him clean and lets him run downhill from depth with outside run support beside him.
Year 1: core four-phase special-teams player and backup weak-side linebacker. Ceiling: low-end starting Will in a 3-4 that asks him only to run and finish.
An even-front Mike job that puts him on a guard every rep and asks him to take on and shed blocks at the point of attack.
His value is tied to staying unblocked; any scheme that routes linemen to him neutralizes his one plus trait.
Shaun Bradley Career Highlights
Career reel showing the downhill trigger and open-field finishing that defined his Temple tape.
Shaun Bradley Temple Highlights
Temple cut-up with the block-avoidance angles and sideline pursuit speed on display.
Shaun Bradley 2020 Tackles
Every rookie-season tackle with Philadelphia, mostly on coverage units.
Bradley is a developmental weak-side linebacker whose case rests on speed, toughness and special-teams value rather than on size or diagnosis. He committed to Temple too late for a scholarship and had to grayshirt the 2015 season, taking classes at a community college before joining the 2016 signing class, then climbed from a rotational freshman to a three-year starter and a captain who wore a single-digit jersey, an honor Temple reserves for its toughest players.
The production shape is steady rather than explosive: 85, 78 and 87 tackles across his three starting seasons, with a career-high in 2019 that also put him on the Bednarik and Nagurski watch lists. His best splash play came in 2018, when he returned an interception for a score as part of a 94-yard pick haul. The flags were consistent across reports — he is late to read run schemes, and once a guard gets hands on him he has no answer to disengage.
Boards had him as a late-Day-3 linebacker in the LB25-to-LB30 range, with a grade that projected a core special-teams role first and defensive snaps only in the right front. Philadelphia took him at 196 as a local pick with 4.51 speed and three years of starting reps, betting on the coverage units rather than on a starting defensive job.
- 01
Downhill trigger
once the ball declares he closes in a straight line with urgency, reaching the hole before pulling linemen can wall him off.
- 02
Special-teams speed
4.51 speed and fearless lane discipline made him a natural coverage player, the profile that got him drafted at all.
- 03
Block avoidance
drops his pad level late and slips around blockers on unorthodox angles instead of trying to stack and shed them.
- 04
Finishing tackler
wraps and drives through contact in the open field rather than diving at ankles, with three forced fumbles in his career.
- 05
Leadership and toughness
a captain who wore a single-digit jersey at Temple, the number the program reserves for its nine toughest players.
- 01
Run-scheme recognition
consistently late to diagnose blocking schemes, which erases much of the advantage his straight-line speed should give him.
- 02
Cannot disengage
once an offensive lineman gets hands on his frame he is stuck, with no punch or power to stack and shed the block.
- 03
Lateral stiffness
a stiff lower body slows him opening and running to the boundary, so his side-to-side speed lags his downhill speed.
- 04
Scheme-dependent role
undersized for a true Mike and without the coverage range to play nickel linebacker, so fit dictates whether he plays.
Relative Athletic Score (Kent Lee Platte) benchmarks combine/pro-day numbers against every measured prospect at the position since 1987. 10.00 is elite; 5.00 is average.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.51sp50
- Vertical
- 32.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 121inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.07sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.24sp50
- Bench
- 14repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Temple | 11 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 2017 | Temple | 13 | 85 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 2018 | Temple | 13 | 78 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| 2019 | Temple | 13 | 87 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
| Career | — | 50 | 256 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 3 |
Sports-Reference (Temple, 2016-2019), bowl games included. Season totals sum exactly to the career line: 50 games, 256 tackles, 22 TFL, 2.0 sacks, 3 INT, 5 PD, 3 FF, 1 FR. Grayshirted 2015, so no season row exists for that year. 2018 interception return yardage was 94 with one return touchdown.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Undersized backup linebacker who sticks for years on the strength of coverage-unit snaps.
The upside version: a mid-round Will who reads faster than expected and turns into a multi-year starter.
Athlete linebacker whose processing and block-shedding never catch up, leaving him a camp body.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Philadelphia used Bradley exactly the way the grade suggested. He made the roster out of his rookie training camp and dressed for 15 games in each of 2020, 2021 and 2022, but he was a coverage-unit player first: across three seasons he logged only 131 defensive snaps and one career start, finishing with 45 total tackles and one pass deflection. A neck surgery in 2022 was the first real warning. He was entering the final year of his four-year rookie deal in August 2023 when he tore his Achilles in the third quarter of a preseason game against Baltimore, and he never appeared in another regular-season game.
The retrospective is a fair sixth-round outcome rather than a hit or a miss. Houston carried him on the practice squad in 2024 and released him that November; Kansas City signed him to a futures deal in January 2025 and cut him on April 30. He announced his retirement in February 2026, revealing that the 2022 neck injury had worsened in September 2025 and that doctors told him he was playing on borrowed time. The pre-draft read was accurate on both ends: he was never going to hold up as an every-down linebacker, and he did give a team three seasons of dependable special-teams work for a sixth-round price.