DJ Hayden was drafted #12 overall by the Oakland Raiders in the 2013 NFL Draft. He has an amazing recovery story attached to his career, as he suffered a tear of his inferior vena cava during what seemed to be a routine collision at practice his senior year of college. That injury has about a 95% fatality rate, but Hayden miraculously survived and was able to recover in time to make Houston’s Pro Day. Coming out of school, Hayden was considered slightly undersized but excellent in man coverage. However, his play at the NFL level hasn’t lived up to his draft status. Hayden was the 2nd CB off the board, after Dee Milliner, but he was also taken before Desmond Trufant and Xavier Rhodes, who have turned out to be blossoming stars at the position. Heading into his third year, Hayden will need to show improvement in his game to validate his draft spot. In the game against the Vikings, he showed a number of areas where he still needs work.

To begin, I’d like to offer a few caveats to my analysis of Hayden. First of all, the NFL doesn’t release the All-22 tape of preseason games. This is really frustrating, particularly when you’re trying to watch CBs or WRs, because half of plays those guys don’t even stay on the screen. So, you’re only going to see plays where I could actually watch Hayden, which means that he was likely being targeted on those plays. So, he could be playing very well (or very poorly) on the plays I can’t see, but I have no way of knowing.

Second and more importantly, this is just a preseason game. It doesn’t count. Playing poorly in the preseason isn’t a death sentence for a player by any means. Playing well doesn’t mean that player is a superstar. Preseason isn’t super useful for evaluating players, except to identify areas they need to work on, and areas where they win. While insight can certainly be gained from watching a player’s preseason performance, it by no means tells the whole story on that player.

There were only 8 plays I found where Hayden was really viewable on the screen. As such, those are the plays I’m going to cover in this post. He allowed three catches on six targets for 35 yards and a TD in the game, and also committed a penalty, so he wasn’t great. I think Hayden showed the beginnings of quality play, but was a little rough around the edges and needs work in a few specific areas.

3-9-MIN 21 (Q1, 13:45) (Shotgun) 5-T.Bridgewater pass incomplete deep middle to 17-J.Wright (96-D.Autry). PENALTY on OAK-25-D.Hayden, Illegal Contact, 5 yards, enforced at MIN 21 – No Play.

1-10-MIN 26 (Q1, 13:38) 5-T.Bridgewater pass short middle to 12-C.Johnson to MIN 40 for 14 yards (20-N.Allen, 25-D.Hayden).

Hayden, #25, is at the bottom of the screen to start this play. He played LCB (left from the defense’s perspective) for the entire game. On this play, he disappears off the screen, where he gets an illegal contact penalty. The broadcast did not show a replay, so I have no idea what he actually did. Obviously, as a CB, you should not be initiating contact with a receiver after five yards past the line of scrimmage. Without actually seeing it, I have no idea what Hayden did.

Hayden does not reappear in either of these replays until the pass is almost completed. However, from the initial setup we can glean a couple of things. First of all, there is only one deeps safety. That means it’s either a Cover 3 or Man Free coverage (aka Cover 1). Both Hayden and TJ Carrie are playing with outside leverage, and Hayden is even playing 7 yards off at the snap. This indicates that the play is zone coverage, so the Raiders are in Cover 3. This is important to realize because even though the Raiders’ LBs move to defend the run after the play action (and the PA fake wasn’t even really all that good but all three Raider LBs bit on it) they are supposed to drop into zones.

Hayden’s responsibility on this play is to defend deep routes first and then go follow after other breaks. Because of the camera angle, the important part of the route is missing and I can’t dissect that, but I can make an educated guess as to what happened. If you slow the gif down, you can see that right before Charles Johnson leaves the screen he takes a step angled towards the sideline. This is important because it seems likely that Johnson set Hayden up with an outside move before coming back inside, where he was able to gain separation and had potential for a big gain after the catch if Teddy’s throw had led him instead of making him reach back to catch it. Hayden, who did definitely lose to Johnson on this play, did a good job of recovering and making the tackle.

1-10-OAK 39 (Q1, 9:42) (Shotgun) 5-T.Bridgewater pass incomplete deep right to 12-C.Johnson (95-B.Mayowa).

4-6-OAK 35 (Q1, 8:21) (Shotgun) 5-T.Bridgewater pass short right to 12-C.Johnson to OAK 24 for 11 yards (20-N.Allen).

On this play, the Raiders play single high coverage again and Hayden is very clearly manned up against Charles Johnson. Bridgewater throws the ball in his direction, but it was a throwaway because the Vikings’ protection got mixed up and nobody blocked Mayowa (rookie RT TJ Clemmings should have). For Hayden’s part in this, he did his job well. When he comes back into the frame he’s probably half a step behind Johnson but that’s not too bad. I think Hayden does a good job of being in position on this play.

2-7-OAK 46 (Q1, 1:12) 5-T.Bridgewater pass to 85-R.Ellison to OAK 33 for 13 yards (25-D.Hayden).

This is a play where Hayden fails to understand the situation and lets up a first down because of it. At the snap, you should note the safeties rotating and Hayden backing off the line of scrimmage. I should note that I also think Charles Johnson does a really good job of running this route. As a receiver, the way you win with route running is by making the DB think you’re running a different route than you actually are. You can do this by being really sudden and fluid in and out of your breaks, but the most important part is making every route you run start off the same. The way to do this is to sell the vertical route. Charles Johnson does a really good job of selling the vertical route for the first three steps of his route by driving hard and keeping his head down. Because of this, Hayden is forced to flip his hips to the outside, which is exactly what Johnson wants. The combination of the good route running and the fact that Hayden started too far off of Johnson and didn’t pay attention to the first down marker like he should have meant that Hayden gave up an easy first down on this play.

1-10-OAK 33 (Q1, :38) 5-T.Bridgewater pass short left to 31-J.McKinnon to OAK 12 for 21 yards (38-T.Carrie, 95-B.Mayowa).

This play is included not because of the coverage but rather because Hayden made the tackle. Well, “made” might be a strong word in this case. He was given the tackle by the scorer. In reality, I’m not a fan of how Hayden approaches this. He just dives at Ellison’s legs, and doesn’t make solid contact at all. Ellison gets up in the air and isn’t actually down until after the safety, Larry Asante, hits him. It’s not too likely but if Asante hadn’t been there it’s possible Ford could have stayed on his feet. On this play, I would have much rather seen Hayden wrap up the runner.

On this play, Hayden is lined up in a different spot – in the slot at the top of the screen against Mike Wallace. The throw doesn’t go in his direction, but the second gif gives you a great view of Hayden on the play. When you slow that play down and focus on him, you can really see it develop. First of all, you notice Wallace take a jab step outside that causes Hayden to flip his hips in that direction. Wallace then obviously breaks the other way. That’s a setup that WRs use all the time.

Hayden actually does a really good job of recovering and getting his hips flipped in the correct direction. But then he commits a cardinal sin by putting both hands on Wallace. He’s more than 5 yards down the field, and this should be called as illegal contact (it wasn’t). DBs making contact with WRs at their break is usually not called, so it isn’t a surprise, but the fact that he put both hands on Wallace makes this a pretty definite illegal contact in my mind.

Then, after that you see Wallace get a step of separation from Hayden. Hayden appears to recover, but Wallace also slows down and in the NFL a step is all you need, especially for someone as fast as Wallace. As a Vikings fan, I actually would have really liked Teddy to throw this ball, because I want to see some chemistry between Wallace and Bridgewater and I also want to see Teddy’s deep ball in action. However, he chooses not to go there (mostly because he has to move to avoid pressure up the middle) so we don’t get to see the throw or how Hayden plays it.

2-8-OAK 10 (Q2, 14:19) (Shotgun) 5-T.Bridgewater pass short right to 12-C.Johnson for 10 yards, TOUCHDOWN.

This play starts with Hayden in the slot on Johnson. This is the only play where Hayden actually presses his receiver at the line. Hayden’s jam is not a good one and Johnson knocks it away easily. He didn’t slow Johnson down at all, as Johnson only had to take one stutter step (which is necessary anyway when you have someone lined up directly in front of you on the line of scrimmage) and then was able to play the rest full speed.

Outside of that, however, which certainly could have altered the course of the play, Hayden was essentially given an impossible assignment. Johnson is running a fade route, which I’m sure everyone reading this is familiar with. For a CB on fades, you want to force the receiver up close to the boundary and ideally out of bounds. The problem with that on this play is that Johnson is running the route from the slot, so he has a lot more space to work with. This pretty much makes it impossible for Hayden to force him out of bounds. Another component of fade route is usually a jump ball. QBs throw a jump ball on those plays because the WR is usually tight up against the sideline and any other throw would be out of bounds. However, because Johnson started from the slot, there’s enough space for Bridgewater to make the throw over Johnson’s outside shoulder. Teddy makes a perfect throw and Hayden has no chance to make a play. Besides the poor jam, DJ did a really good job of coverage on this play, but he just couldn’t do anything against the perfect throw.

1-10-MIN 41 (Q2, 10:57) (Shotgun) 13-S.Hill pass incomplete short right to 84-C.Patterson.

Hayden starts this play in off coverage. Cordarrelle Patterson runs a curl directly underneath him. On this play, Patterson and QB Shaun Hill are not in sync. Patterson ends up on one particular spot on the field, while Hill throws to a different landmark. This could be due to either an imprecise route run by Patterson or an inaccurate throw by Hill; I don’t have the inside knowledge to know which one it is. In any case, if the throw was on target, this would have been a catch. Hayden is either slow to react or give the route too much of a cushion, and while hits Patterson and would have made a tackle preventing any gain after the catch, Patterson still would have (well, should have, he could always drop it) caught the ball had it been on target.For a CB, a statline of 3/6 with 35 yards and a TD allowed isn’t great. With that being said, I don’t think Hayden was terrible in this game. I think he generally did a good job of covering the deep routes he faced (although there was that split second where a window opened for Wallace). He did a good job of turning with the receiver and riding his hip down the field. One area of his game that I really feel he needs to improve is how much of a cushion he gives WRs around the first down line. It could also be that he’s just bad at recognition, which is harder to fix, but I think his problems stem from being worried about the possibility of a deep route and then not being close enough to the receiver to close on the pass when it’s an underneath route. This is hopefully an easy thing to fix (he just needs to be mindful of the position of the first down marker). He does have the speed to match deep routes, so it’s not like he’s playing so far off as a crutch. Finally, his jam at the line of scrimmage absolutely needs work. The time he tried to jam Charles Johnson didn’t work out at all.

The good news for Hayden is that he clearly has the physical tools (speed, hip flexibility, ability to track the ball) to succeed in the NFL, it’s just that there are some nuances of his game that need work. Improvement needs to come soon for him, or else his window to become a star might pass him by.