The 2024 NFL Draft is getting close, making it an excellent time to highlight some of the class' best players with scouting reports. Each report will include strengths, weaknesses and background information.
Here's our report on Calen Bullock.
Bullock will likely transition to the next level as a back-end safety with his thin frame and excellent play speed and range that consistently showed up on tape. Bullock is long, lean and athletic. While there was a competitive and physical nature to his game, he did not exhibit the play strength and tackling technique needed to play with any consistency in the box.
Bullock’s tape presented somewhat of a dilemma. He was physically tough in his mindset and approach yet lacked the play strength to execute his mentality. Too often, he was physically beaten as a run defender. Bullock is at his best as a post-safety, where his gliding strides and sideline-to-sideline range can best be maximized.
That would project and transition best in a defense that features Cover 1 and Cover 3 as foundations. While Bullock has the length and athleticism to match up to NFL TE, he might not have the needed play strength to stay connected to their routes.
It’s questionable whether defensive coordinators would feel comfortable with those matchups, but Bullock must, at times, match up with TEs. The question is whether he can do that detached from the formation. Bullock’s best transition to the NFL is not a mystery. He is a single-high coverage safety, bringing higher-level range with his stride length and play speed. He has excellent ball tracking and ball production skills, which give him a playmaking dimension.
There are meaningful limitations to his game regarding recognition, reaction, run defense, and overall play strength that need to be improved significantly before Bullock can develop into a quality starting post-safety. One of the main questions that teams and coaches will have to get a feel for is whether Bullock can develop into more of an interchangeable safety with a stronger primary run support dimension and man-cover skills.
Bullock came out of southern California as a four-star recruit and stayed home to attend USC. He played significant snaps as a freshman at multiple secondary positions before playing primarily safety in 2022.
In 2022, Bullock predominantly aligned to the field in split-safety looks. There were man coverage snaps in which he matched up man-to-man on the TE and slot WR. Bullock aligned to the boundary and made a strong downhill tackle in the run game vs. Oregon State. He had some strong snaps vs. Arizona, playing downhill and making tackles in the run game and WR screens.
In 2023, Bullock also predominantly lined up to the field (almost always the passing strength of the offensive formation), and when the formation was trips, he often matched up man-to-man. He continued to get snaps in which he matched up to slot WR (especially #3 to trips). There were Cover 2 snaps in which he was the middle-hole defender. Bullock's role expanded in 2023 with more snaps in the box and in the slot with the distribution between playing on the back end (still the most snaps) and the box and the slot much more even.
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