Keith Abney II never played slot cornerback in college. He was ticketed for nickel duties before his sophomore season, but when Arizona State lost a starting cornerback to the transfer portal Abney moved outside.
Detroit Lions general manager Brad Holmes saw Abney excel in his two seasons as a starting outside cornerback for the Sun Devils, when he had five interceptions and forced two fumbles.
But Holmes said Abney, the Lions’ first of two fifth-round picks in last week’s NFL draft, “might tilt a little bit more” to playing inside in Detroit.
“He’s another instinctive guy that he could find the football, he can trigger, he can tackle, he’s pretty sticky,” Holmes said Saturday in Allen Park after the draft. “He was just a simple one [for us to draft] because we had him ranked a couple rounds higher than where he was, so that was a no-brainer for us.”
The Lions return starting outside cornerbacks D.J. Reed and Terrion Arnold, plus do-it-all backups Rock Ya-Sin and Avonte Maddox, and added two potential slot cornerbacks in free agency in Roger McCreary and Christian Izien.
McCreary played 167 of his 210 coverage snaps out of the slot last season for the Los Angeles Rams, according to the NFL’s Next Gen stats, while Izien started at slot corner for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers early in his career before moving to safety.
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Abney, a shade under 5 feet 10 and 187 pounds, has similar size to Izien and McCreary.
And while Holmes said that won’t hinder Abney’s ability to play outside – “I do think he can play outside for sure,” Holmes said – he said Abney is rich in two traits he looks for in slot corners: toughness and instincts.
“You’ve got to do a lot of things at that nickel spot,” Holmes said. “Yeah, you want speed to be able to match vertically, but you want a guy that has a little bit more short-area suddenness just to handle the two-way goes and to be able to get off the spot. But there’s a lot of run action coming at you, too, at that spot. So, he’s going to be just fine.”
Abney said he practiced some as Arizona State’s backup slot cornerback last season but had to stay outside when injuries struck the Sun Devils’ secondary “so we can get elite play on the outside.”
In Detroit, he said he’s willing to play wherever for a team he called “a perfect fit” for his skills.
“I just want to win games,” Abney said. “If it takes me to play nickel to win games, that's what we're going to do. Outside, safety, anything, I just want to win. So whatever coach's plan is to put the team in best position to win, I'm willing to do anything, willing to play any role."
Dave Birkett covers the Lions for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Bluesky, X and Instagram at @davebirkett.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Keith Abney ticketed for slot CB in Detroit Lions secondary