SPORTS

Lions GM Bob Quinn: Teez Tabor plays faster than 40-yard dash time

Dave Birkett

Detroit Free Press

Tabor left Florida after his junior season and he does not lack confidence. "I feel like I'm the best overall player in the draft, not just the best cornerback,” he said at the scouting combine. “That's just the confidence I have in myself and my ability to play football.”

Detroit Lions general manager Bob Quinn said he spent more time watching game tape of cornerback Teez Tabor "than any prospect that I could ever remember watching" as he tried to figure out how to account for Tabor's slow 40-yard dash times in his prospect evaluation.

"Everyone said he ran real slow," Quinn said after Day 2 of the NFL draft Friday. "I said, 'OK, well, the games that I watched, I didn’t see him get run by.' So we kept going back. 'Well, let’s watch this game. Let’s watch that game. Let’s go back to 2016. Go back to 2015 when he was a young kid playing.'"

One of the best cover cornerbacks in college football last year, Tabor ran a concerning 4.62-second 40 at the NFL combine in March and followed that up a few weeks later with an even slower 40 -- in the 4.7-second range -- at his Florida pro day.

Tabor said he ran slower at his pro day because he had stopped training for the 40 and turned his attention to football drills.

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Despite Tabor's slow times, the Lions still thought enough of the third-year junior that they took him with their second-round pick Friday, No. 53 overall.

"I can’t sit here and say I watched every play that he’s ever played at Florida, but I watched a considerable amount of games and reps of him," Quinn said, estimating he watched 14 of Tabor's games from the last three seasons. "We had a really good workout with him down at the University of Florida, so timed speed is what it is. I take playing speed as a more important gauge than timed speed."

Quinn said Tabor has the requisite feel, instincts and recognition to play as a cornerback in the NFL, and Tabor is expected to compete for playing time this fall in a Lions secondary that includes Darius Slay, Nevin Lawson and D.J. Hayden.

If not for his slow 40 time -- "an alert," Quinn said that caused him to take a deep dive into Florida film -- there's a good chance that Tabor would have come off the board in the first 50 picks.

"You have to be an instinctive player and we use the term reactionary athleticism," Quinn said. "When you’re playing defense, you’re reacting to what the offensive player is doing. And it’s one of the hardest positions to play in sports. So if you don’t have really good instincts and really good feel and anticipation, it doesn’t matter if you’re 4.2 or 4.9. If you don’t have those anticipation, instincts, awareness, route recognition, all those things, I think I put those higher up than how fast the guy ran at the combine.”

Contact Dave Birkett: dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett. Download our Lions Xtra app for free on Apple and Android!