Tycen
Anderson.
Tycen
Anderson.
Toledo· 6'2"· 209 lb· 4.36s 40
Anderson is a 6-foot-2, 210-pound safety who ran 4.36 with a 37-inch vertical and a 10-foot-3 broad jump. That combination of size and straight-line speed is rare, and Toledo used it by keeping him close to the line of scrimmage, where he triggered downhill and arrived with force.
The film is a run defender first. He racked up 84 tackles as a sophomore filling alleys and cleaning up on the perimeter, and he was a willing hitter in the MAC's spread-heavy schedule. In coverage he is more athlete than technician: sixteen career pass breakups and two interceptions across five seasons is thin production for a player with his testing, and his eyes leave receivers when he is reading the backfield from depth.
Single-high or two-high defense that rolls him into the box as the strong safety, letting him play downhill in run support and match tight ends rather than patrol the deep middle.
Year 1: core special teams player and dime defender. Ceiling: starting strong safety in a run-support role with matchup coverage duties.
A pure single-high scheme that asks him to play deep middle every snap and win with anticipation and range reads rather than triggering on what he sees in front of him.
Everything he does well happens moving forward.
Tycen Anderson 2022 NFL Draft Profile: Defensive Back, University of Toledo
Pre-draft breakdown of his Toledo tape, focused on downhill triggers and box work.
Toledo's Tycen Anderson Travels Down I-75, Drafted By Cincinnati
Local broadcast draft feature with Toledo game footage and background.
Bengals Boost Their Secondary With Tycen Anderson
Draft-night analysis of the pick with college clips and the athletic profile.
Anderson grew up in Toledo and played three sports at St. John's Jesuit before choosing the hometown Rockets over Air Force, Kentucky, Bowling Green and Eastern Kentucky. He played immediately as a freshman in 2017 and never came off the field again.
His third season was the volume year: 84 tackles with five pass breakups in 2019, the number that put him on draft radars. He earned second-team All-MAC in the six-game COVID-shortened 2020 season, then took the extra year of eligibility rather than declare. The decision paid off with first-team All-MAC in 2021 on 44 tackles, one sack, two breakups and a forced fumble, and it gave scouts a fifth year of clean tape from a player who had already logged more than two hundred career tackles.
Then Indianapolis turned him from a Day 3 flier into a bet worth making. A 4.36 forty at 6-foot-1 7/8 and 209 pounds, backed by a 6.64 three-cone and a 4.27 shuttle, is elite testing for a safety of that size. The coverage production never matched the athleticism, and the twelve bench reps hinted at average functional strength, but Cincinnati took him 166th overall expecting an immediate core special teams player with the traits to grow into a subpackage defender.
- 01
Size-speed combination
6-foot-1 7/8 and 209 pounds with a 4.36 forty, a build and burst profile that very few safeties in any class can match.
- 02
Explosiveness
a 37-inch vertical and 10-foot-3 broad jump confirm the lower-body power that shows up when he closes downhill on a ball carrier.
- 03
Change of direction
a 6.64 three-cone and 4.27 shuttle at his size mean the movement skills are there for man coverage on tight ends and backs.
- 04
Run support
a physical, willing tackler near the line who produced 84 stops as a sophomore and stayed above 34 in every full season.
- 05
Special teams profile
the speed, length and tackling that make him an immediate gunner and kick coverage player at the NFL level.
- 01
Ball production
two interceptions and sixteen pass breakups across five college seasons is thin for a player with his athletic testing.
- 02
Coverage instincts
his eyes drift to the backfield from depth, and he arrives late on routes behind him rather than driving on the throw.
- 03
Level of competition
he dominated physically against MAC offenses and never faced an NFL-caliber receiving corps on a weekly basis.
- 04
Functional strength
twelve bench reps at 209 pounds is below the position standard and shows up when he tries to take on blockers in the alley.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.36sp50
- Vertical
- 35.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 123inp50
- Three-cone
- 6.64sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.28sp50
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Toledo | — | 26 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 |
| 2018 | Toledo | — | 45 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 1 |
| 2019 | Toledo | — | 84 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| 2020 | Toledo | 6 | 34 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| 2021 | Toledo | — | 44 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| Career | — | 6 | 233 | 2 | 2 | 16 | 2 |
Season lines come from ESPN's college splits and the career row is the exact sum of those five seasons. Toledo's official athletics site no longer hosts his player bio, so per-season games played and tackles for loss could not be verified and are left blank rather than estimated; the 2020 figure of six games is documented as the length of the MAC's shortened pandemic season in which he earned second-team all-conference honors. Published accounts of his freshman year list a different tackle total than ESPN's, so only the ESPN figure is used here to keep the season lines and the career total internally consistent. Fumble recoveries are not published for any season.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Physical strong safety whose value comes from run support and special teams rather than ball production.
Oversized athletic safety from a smaller program who becomes a starter by living in the box and covering tight ends.
Downhill hitter whose coverage limitations keep him rotating between subpackage work and core special teams.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
The defensive snaps never came. Cincinnati put Anderson on injured reserve on September 2 of his rookie year, wiping out the 2022 season before it started. He returned in 2023 as the backup free safety behind Daxton Hill and played exclusively on kick and punt coverage, then tore his ACL early in the Week 8 game against San Francisco, finished the game, and went on injured reserve on November 3 with eight tackles.
He came back healthy and durable, playing all seventeen games in 2024 and again in 2025 with eleven and 23 tackles, but still without a defensive role. Denver signed him in March 2026 on a one-year, $1.5 million deal and he said plainly that he would be playing gunner. Four seasons, 41 games, zero starts and 42 career tackles is the record of a special teams specialist, not the subpackage safety the testing promised. The traits were real; two major injuries and the coverage questions kept them from ever reaching a defensive snap count.