Tre
Hawkins.
Tre
Hawkins.
Old Dominion
"Length and a 4.39 forty at 6-foot-3 made him a workout riser; two years of Sun Belt starts and only two career interceptions made him a project, and the Giants bought the traits at pick 209."Pre-draft read
A 6-3 boundary corner who lived on the outside, Hawkins led with length: a long jam at the line, a long arm to re-route the stem, and enough recovery reach to squeeze the catch point after a release beat him. He was best with his eyes in the backfield, reading routes from a patient pedal and driving downhill on hitches in front of him.
The secondary trait was tackling appetite. He fought off stalk blocks and finished as one of the leading tacklers on his defense rather than a corner who avoided the run fit. Change of direction was the trade-off, since he opened his hips deliberately and surrendered ground on double moves. What separated him was straight-line speed at that height, a gear that let him carry verticals without panic.
Zone-heavy Cover 3 or quarters front that lets him press-bail from the boundary with eyes on the quarterback.
Year 1: fourth or fifth corner and core special-teamer while the transition gets rebuilt. Ceiling: starting boundary corner in a single-high zone defense.
Man-heavy scheme that asks him to travel with quick, sudden slot receivers and mirror double moves in space.
His value rises the more he is allowed to see the ball and fall the more he is asked to turn and run blind.
Giants CB Tre Hawkins Film Breakdown
All-22 breakdown of his press and bail technique during his rookie season.
Deonte Banks & Tre Hawkins (Giants CBs) EVERY SNAP vs Lions
Full snap reel of his boundary reps, showing the jam and the transition out of the pedal.
CB Tre Hawkins on first career interception
His Week 14 interception of Derek Carr, the play that ended an eleven-game team takeaway drought.
Hawkins was the classic small-school length-and-speed corner, a junior-college transfer who arrived at Old Dominion as a project and left as the profile a defensive backs coach sketches on a napkin: 6-3, 195, and the top-end speed to run with a boundary receiver. He was a two-year starter on the outside and never moved inside, which framed the projection cleanly. A team was buying press-bail traits and a frame, not a finished technician.
The production told the story of an aggressive, physical corner rather than a ball hawk. He piled up 76 tackles as a junior and 57 more as a senior, numbers that speak to how often the Sun Belt threw at him and how willingly he hit. The ball skills lagged: two interceptions and 12 pass breakups across two seasons is thin for a boundary starter, and the tape showed a defender who located the receiver long before he located the ball.
The flags were level of competition, a hitchy transition, and grabby hands late in reps that would meet a different standard of officiating in the NFL. Then the pre-draft workout arrived: 4.39, a 37.5-inch vertical, a 6.74 three-cone. Boards that had him as a late Day 3 flier moved up, top-30 visits followed, and the Giants spent the 209th pick on traits, betting coaching would catch the technique up to the frame.
- 01
Length as a weapon
Wins the line of scrimmage with a long, well-timed jam and keeps re-routing through the stem, shrinking the throwing window on outside-breaking concepts.
- 02
Verified long speed
A 4.39 forty at 6-3 is a rare combination, and it shows up on tape as the ability to carry a vertical release from press without needing safety help over the top.
- 03
Zone eyes
Plays with vision on the quarterback from a patient pedal, reads the stem cleanly and triggers downhill on hitches and comebacks in front of him for punishing tackles.
- 04
Willing run defender
Fights off stalk blocks at the boundary and finished among his defense's leading tacklers, an unusual appetite for contact from a tall perimeter corner.
- 05
Contested catch point
Uses reach and a 37.5-inch vertical to squeeze the ball late even when the release beats him, turning would-be completions into incompletions at the rim.
- 01
Hips and transition
Opens deliberately out of his pedal and loses ground on sudden double moves, which lets sharp route runners uncover underneath before he can plant and drive.
- 02
Ball production
Two interceptions and 12 pass breakups over two starting seasons is thin, a symptom of tracking the receiver rather than turning to find the football.
- 03
Grabby late in reps
Leans on his hands when beaten downfield, a habit that drew flags in college and projects to more of them against NFL officiating standards.
- 04
Level of competition
Two years of Sun Belt and Conference USA starts against a junior-college background left evaluators guessing about how the technique would hold up.
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Old Dominion | 13 | 76 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 1 |
| 2022 | Old Dominion | 12 | 57 | 0 | 2 | 6 | 2 |
| Career | — | 25 | 133 | 0 | 2 | 12 | 3 |
Verified line by line on cfbstats (Old Dominion team id 523, player id 1112845). Old Dominion cancelled its 2020 season, so no 2020 row exists; his 2018-19 seasons at Trinity Valley Community College are junior-college and are not carried in FBS records. Season totals sum exactly to the career line. Old Dominion's bio and Wikipedia list three career fumble recoveries and six tackles for loss; cfbstats shows one and 5.0, and the cfbstats figures are used here.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Big outside corner who sticks in the league as a fourth corner and special-teams contributor rather than a fixed starter.
Long, zone-comfortable corner who grew into a starting role once the technique caught up to the frame.
Small-school Day 3 corner whose window closed after injury before the technique could develop.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
The Giants did not treat him like a sixth-round flier. He won a starting boundary job out of training camp as a rookie and opened the 2023 season across from fellow rookie Deonte Banks, playing 88, 63 and 67 percent of the snaps in the first three games. Then the league corrected the experiment. He was benched for the Monday night loss to Seattle and never got the job back, finishing with 35 tackles across all 17 games as a rotational corner and special-teamer. Year two ended almost before it began: in three games he intercepted Derek Carr in Week 14 to snap a franchise-record eleven-game drought without a takeaway, and suffered a fractured lumbar vertebra on the same afternoon. Waived with an injury designation at 2025 cuts, he landed on Washington's practice squad, then signed with Minnesota in August 2026 and was cut at final roster deadline.
In hindsight the pick was reasonable and the deployment was not. A 6-3 corner with a 4.39 and two years of small-school starts is exactly what the sixth round exists for, but the Giants asked him to start Week 1 in a secondary with no veteran cushion, and the technique gaps obvious on his college tape became the story of a losing season. The back injury took the developmental runway he needed. He remains what he was in April 2023: a traits corner still looking for a defense patient enough to build fundamentals underneath them.