Iowa City defensive backs are working their way into the same type of esteem that tight ends from the Iowa Hawkeyes are held in. Boasting potentially the best defensive back to ever come through Iowa City yet certainly helps that case.
Iowa’s Cooper DeJean put on a show week after week during the 2022 season. Down the stretch, he had opposing teams and quarterbacks choosing to entirely avoiding throwing his way as he turned mistakes not only into turnovers but into touchdowns the other way. He tallied 75 tackles, 13 passes defended, and five interceptions, three of which he turned into touchdowns.
The 6-foot-1, 209 pound defensive back recently received recognition from Athlon Sports as a preseason All-American. But, still, 247Sports curiously appears to be sleeping on DeJean in 2023. They left him off their list of college football’s defensive stars primed for monster seasons.
Inserting Penn State’s Kalen King into the list as a cornerback might be the most curious piece of all. The Nittany Lion had just 30 tackles and three interceptions last year. Each of those is just roughly half of the production DeJean put out.
Also included as a defensive back is Georgia’s Javon Bullard. The Bulldog had 46 total tackles and two interceptions last year. DeJean also easily eclipsed these numbers.
One train of thought is that DeJean has had a monster season, so it may be disqualifying him to be primed up and ready to have another monster season. You have to hope that’s the case at least, because the decision to leave out a defensive back in Cooper DeJean who is nearly unanimously already mocked as a future NFL first-round draft pick is intriguing to put it nicely.
247Sports did include the Hawkeyes in its list of the projected top-10 defenses entering 2023 back in April. Iowa checked in at No. 9 nationally on that list with fellow Big Ten foes Michigan, Penn State, and Wisconsin also featured.
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