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One of the most interesting cornerbacks in the upcoming NFL Draft is East Carolina’s Shavon Revel, but the reason why is not ideal for him, or any team considering picking him.
He wouldn’t have been interesting at all because his talent, size and athleticism are everything you would look for in a starting cornerback and he would have been an easy top 15 or 20 pick.
But here comes the “but.” Teams, particularly the Buffalo Bills who are in obvious need of a starting CB2, have to wonder what kind of player Revel will become after he suffered a torn ACL last September and missed all but three games.
As we all know with ACLs, there is no straight path to recovery. Everyone heals and rehabs at a different pace.
For the Bills, a team that is in a win-now window, they have to weigh the risk of taking a swing on a player who sure looks like he could be very good in the NFL, but comes with a big injury concern.
Revel, whose first name is pronounced with a silent ‘H’, has not been able to test for teams because he’s still in the rehab process, but he said at the scouting combine in late February that he was on schedule for a return to full clearance in August. Of course, that would mean he’d be unable to get on the field for a team’s spring OTA sessions, and depending on when in August he can get back, perhaps the entire training camp.
Think back to last season when Buffalo’s second-round pick Cole Bishop got hurt early in training camp. Even though the safety had gone through all of the OTA practice and missed only a few weeks in training camp, it set him back in a big way, and that was a shoulder injury, not a torn ACL.
It’s way too early to make a projection, but it seems like a very real possibility that Revel won’t be able to help a team very much in 2025, at least as a full-time starter.
However, the risk may be worth it because if there’s anything that Revel has proven, he has an unmatched work ethic and has already overcome a lot to get to the doorstep of the NFL.
In his sophomore year in high school, Revel was seriously injured in a car accident when his father blacked out behind the wheel with his three sons in the vehicle. Revel suffered a fractured skull and a broken nose and it took a year before he was ready to play football again.
“I mean, just sticking to the plan, man,” he said at the scouting combine of his journey back to football. “There’s people out there willing to help you.”
On the field, his talent was undeniable, but poor grades kept big-time Division I programs away so he had to enroll at Louisburg (N.C) College, a junior college near his hometown of Winston-Salem, only to have his freshman year wiped out by the pandemic.
His fortunes began to change in June 2021. He was attending school, practicing with the football team, and working overnight shifts at an Amazon warehouse when he heard about a prospect camp at East Carolina. He showed up and with almost no sleep, Revel blew the coaches away with his workout which included a 4.4 time in the 40 and a 39-inch vertical leap.
“We didn’t know much about him, really nothing, but were like, ‘Holy smokes!’ when we saw him run and work out in some of the position drills,” ECU coach Blake Harrell told ESPN. “You just don’t see that kind of speed, with his cutting ability, at his size and his length.”
A scholarship was offered that day, but Revel could not enroll until he became academically eligible so he stayed at Louisburg and got his grades in compliance, but the team’s season was shortened to two games due to the lingering pandemic. Still, ECU wasn’t backing away and he was able to transfer in 2022.
“I grew from that,” he said of that time in his life. “I went to JUCO, got my GPA up, went to East Carolina camp. They offered me, gave me the opportunity to go back to (Louisburg) and get at least a 2.6. I went back to school, got a 2.8 and I attended ECU in 2022.”
He got into nine games that season and then came his breakthrough in 2023 when he played 651 snaps, 328 in coverage, allowed a paltry 44.2 completion percentage and had an interception return for a touchdown. He was soaring once again in the first three games of 2024 with a 38.1 completion percentage against and two picks, one returned for a TD, when he went down against Appalachian State.
For Revel, this is merely the latest hardship that he fully intends to overcome. Although he couldn’t test at the combine or East Carolina’s pro day, he has been meeting with teams in an effort to convince one of them to take a chance on him.
The message he’s trying to convey, especially because he has such a limited resume with a mere 880 defensive snaps at ECU?
“Man, you’re going to get a hard-working, downhill, hard-nosed cornerback, 110% effort every single day,” said Revel, who earned a degree in communications last December. “I always believed in myself. I always trusted in my abilities that I had and that I carried also throughout my life. Just being confident and if you’re a dog, you’re a dog.”
➤ Lance Zierlein, NFL.com said, “Big, long and fast are the physical descriptors that stand out for the East Carolina corner. Revel is leggy when matching press release but he’s disruptive once he gets his hands on the wideout. He plays upright in man coverage, tends to allow small pockets of separation due to his high center of gravity and still needs improvement when it comes to finding and defending the deep ball, despite his ability to stay in phase with vertical routes. He has ideal length and good vision from zone, and he should continue to improve in that coverage with more experience. Revel suffered a torn ACL in September, but his measurables, explosiveness and upside give him a good chance to become an early starter.”
➤ Nate Tice, Yahoo! Sports said, “Revel has the ideal size and length of a starting outside cornerback in the NFL. He has good foot quickness and can start and stop to keep up with receivers, along with the ball skills to smother receivers. His traits and small sample of play were strong enough that I think he will have plenty of fans in the league if his medicals come through clean. He could also stand to add some bulk and strength to his game, and like most young cornerbacks he can be inconsistent with his technique at times. Still, he has the size, length, twitchy athleticism and overall upside of a high-end corner who can play in any type of defense.”
Sal Maiorana has covered the Buffalo Bills for four decades including 35 years as the full-time beat writer for the D&C, he has written numerous books about the history of the team, and he is also co-host of the BLEAV in Bills podcast/YouTube show. He can be reached at [email protected], and you can follow him on X @salmaiorana and on Bluesky @salmaiorana.bsky.social. Sign up for his Bills Blast newsletter here: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Shavon Revel may be a fit for Buffalo Bills in NFL draft: Here's why
Continue reading...
He wouldn’t have been interesting at all because his talent, size and athleticism are everything you would look for in a starting cornerback and he would have been an easy top 15 or 20 pick.
But here comes the “but.” Teams, particularly the Buffalo Bills who are in obvious need of a starting CB2, have to wonder what kind of player Revel will become after he suffered a torn ACL last September and missed all but three games.
As we all know with ACLs, there is no straight path to recovery. Everyone heals and rehabs at a different pace.
For the Bills, a team that is in a win-now window, they have to weigh the risk of taking a swing on a player who sure looks like he could be very good in the NFL, but comes with a big injury concern.
Shavon Revel unable to participate in NFL combine drills
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Revel, whose first name is pronounced with a silent ‘H’, has not been able to test for teams because he’s still in the rehab process, but he said at the scouting combine in late February that he was on schedule for a return to full clearance in August. Of course, that would mean he’d be unable to get on the field for a team’s spring OTA sessions, and depending on when in August he can get back, perhaps the entire training camp.
Think back to last season when Buffalo’s second-round pick Cole Bishop got hurt early in training camp. Even though the safety had gone through all of the OTA practice and missed only a few weeks in training camp, it set him back in a big way, and that was a shoulder injury, not a torn ACL.
It’s way too early to make a projection, but it seems like a very real possibility that Revel won’t be able to help a team very much in 2025, at least as a full-time starter.
Why teams may risk selecting Shavon Revel early in NFL draft
However, the risk may be worth it because if there’s anything that Revel has proven, he has an unmatched work ethic and has already overcome a lot to get to the doorstep of the NFL.
In his sophomore year in high school, Revel was seriously injured in a car accident when his father blacked out behind the wheel with his three sons in the vehicle. Revel suffered a fractured skull and a broken nose and it took a year before he was ready to play football again.
“I mean, just sticking to the plan, man,” he said at the scouting combine of his journey back to football. “There’s people out there willing to help you.”
On the field, his talent was undeniable, but poor grades kept big-time Division I programs away so he had to enroll at Louisburg (N.C) College, a junior college near his hometown of Winston-Salem, only to have his freshman year wiped out by the pandemic.
His fortunes began to change in June 2021. He was attending school, practicing with the football team, and working overnight shifts at an Amazon warehouse when he heard about a prospect camp at East Carolina. He showed up and with almost no sleep, Revel blew the coaches away with his workout which included a 4.4 time in the 40 and a 39-inch vertical leap.
“We didn’t know much about him, really nothing, but were like, ‘Holy smokes!’ when we saw him run and work out in some of the position drills,” ECU coach Blake Harrell told ESPN. “You just don’t see that kind of speed, with his cutting ability, at his size and his length.”
A scholarship was offered that day, but Revel could not enroll until he became academically eligible so he stayed at Louisburg and got his grades in compliance, but the team’s season was shortened to two games due to the lingering pandemic. Still, ECU wasn’t backing away and he was able to transfer in 2022.
“I grew from that,” he said of that time in his life. “I went to JUCO, got my GPA up, went to East Carolina camp. They offered me, gave me the opportunity to go back to (Louisburg) and get at least a 2.6. I went back to school, got a 2.8 and I attended ECU in 2022.”
He got into nine games that season and then came his breakthrough in 2023 when he played 651 snaps, 328 in coverage, allowed a paltry 44.2 completion percentage and had an interception return for a touchdown. He was soaring once again in the first three games of 2024 with a 38.1 completion percentage against and two picks, one returned for a TD, when he went down against Appalachian State.
For Revel, this is merely the latest hardship that he fully intends to overcome. Although he couldn’t test at the combine or East Carolina’s pro day, he has been meeting with teams in an effort to convince one of them to take a chance on him.
The message he’s trying to convey, especially because he has such a limited resume with a mere 880 defensive snaps at ECU?
“Man, you’re going to get a hard-working, downhill, hard-nosed cornerback, 110% effort every single day,” said Revel, who earned a degree in communications last December. “I always believed in myself. I always trusted in my abilities that I had and that I carried also throughout my life. Just being confident and if you’re a dog, you’re a dog.”
What the draft analysts are saying about Shavon Revel
➤ Lance Zierlein, NFL.com said, “Big, long and fast are the physical descriptors that stand out for the East Carolina corner. Revel is leggy when matching press release but he’s disruptive once he gets his hands on the wideout. He plays upright in man coverage, tends to allow small pockets of separation due to his high center of gravity and still needs improvement when it comes to finding and defending the deep ball, despite his ability to stay in phase with vertical routes. He has ideal length and good vision from zone, and he should continue to improve in that coverage with more experience. Revel suffered a torn ACL in September, but his measurables, explosiveness and upside give him a good chance to become an early starter.”
➤ Nate Tice, Yahoo! Sports said, “Revel has the ideal size and length of a starting outside cornerback in the NFL. He has good foot quickness and can start and stop to keep up with receivers, along with the ball skills to smother receivers. His traits and small sample of play were strong enough that I think he will have plenty of fans in the league if his medicals come through clean. He could also stand to add some bulk and strength to his game, and like most young cornerbacks he can be inconsistent with his technique at times. Still, he has the size, length, twitchy athleticism and overall upside of a high-end corner who can play in any type of defense.”
Sal Maiorana has covered the Buffalo Bills for four decades including 35 years as the full-time beat writer for the D&C, he has written numerous books about the history of the team, and he is also co-host of the BLEAV in Bills podcast/YouTube show. He can be reached at [email protected], and you can follow him on X @salmaiorana and on Bluesky @salmaiorana.bsky.social. Sign up for his Bills Blast newsletter here: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Shavon Revel may be a fit for Buffalo Bills in NFL draft: Here's why
Continue reading...
