This small-school safety is a jackpot option for Philadelphia Eagles

Once a darkhorse, Kyle Dugger represents an early-round safety option for the Philadelphia Eagles, and he’s as close to being a sure thing as any prospect can be. 

While the Philadelphia Eagles and the 31 other teams in the NFL work their way through the draft process, identifying a prospect’s level of competition during his journey at the collegiate level is just as important as how many tackles he racked up and what he ran in the 40-yard dash.

Can you imagine what Miles Sanders and Saquon Barkley would have done as a tandem at a Division II school? The strength of a prospect’s conference tells you a lot about what they produced statistically.

For that reason, guys like Kyle Dugger don’t get the attention of a guy who played in one of the Power Five conferences (the ACC, SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, and Pac-12), but if you’ve been paying attention, he’s catapulted himself into the conversation of the best safeties entering the NFL in 2020.

This native of Decatur, Georgia, Dugger played his high school ball at Whitewater High Scholl in Fayetteville, Georgia before going on to cut his teeth in North Carolina with the Lenoir-Rhyne Bears. Looking back, it makes one wonder if the Georgia Bulldogs are kicking themselves for not bringing him in.

After being given a redshirt in year one, he put together a nice run in Hickory, earning a Cliff Harris Award in 2019, which honors the nation’s “Small College Defensive Player of the Year”. That helped him earn a Pro Bowl invite and an invitation to the NFL Combine in Indianapolis.

There, he ran a 4.49-second 40-yard dash. He threw up 17 reps on the bench press, and he showcased a 42-inch vertical before scoring 134 inches in the broad jump. Dugger is six-foot-one inches tall and weighs 217 pounds, so there are a few scouts who see him in the same vein that they see Nathan Gerry, a guy who played safety at the collegiate level who could transition to linebacker as a professional.

Regardless of what side of that argument you’re on, here’s what we all can guess. If you’re setting up a draft board, place Dugger between Xavier McKinney and Grant Delpit and the next tier of safety prospects (Khaleke Hudson, J.R. Reed, and Jordan Fuller).

If he’s around in the second round, he could provide value for the Eagles. Lance Zierlein of NFL.com, in his draft profile, sees Dugger as a prospect who “will be a starter within (his) first two seasons”. If he lands in the “City of Brotherly Love”, we may be looking at someone who can hold down one of the starting safety spots for the next ten years. We’ll have to wait and see if that’s an idea that the ‘Birds’ are, at least, tossing around.