'Best player on the field:' Dre' Bly on what makes Caleb Downs special

How high should Ohio State's do-it-all safety go? We chat with the person who knows Downs best. His uncle excelled in the pros and details why this safety is worthy of a high pick.

Apr 21, 2026

Safeties are almost never drafted at the top of an NFL draft. This position isn’t valued like edge rusher, left tackle, wide receiver, etc.

In the last six decades, only 16 have gone in the first 10 picks and only five of those have been selected in the top 5. It hasn’t even happened in 16 years. Those players? Kenny Easley (No. 4 overall, 1981), Bennie Blades (No. 3, 1988), Eric Turner (No. 2, 1991), Sean Taylor (No. 5, 2004) and Eric Berry (No. 5, 2010).

Then again, two of the sport’s finest football minds ever — Bill Belichick and Nick Saban — were behind that safety going second overall in ‘91.

Then again, Caleb Downs is far more than a “safety.”

Watch any Ohio State game and you’ll see No. 2 striking defenders, making plays on the ball, closing fast from all contours of the field. Defensive coordinator Matt Patricia deployed the All-American everywhere. In a class full of question marks, Downs is a sure thing. The 5-foot-11 1/2, 207-pounder from Hoschton, Ga., also has genetics on his side.

His father, Gary, was a third-round pick in 1994. He played running back in the NFL for six seasons.

His uncle on Mom’s side is also longtime NFL cornerback Dre’ Bly. The two-time Pro Bowler won a Super Bowl as a rookie with the St. Louis Rams in 1999, reached another Super Bowl in 2001 and finished his career with 43 interceptions, 20 forced fumbles and 150 PBUs. Now, he’s a coach. Bly is currently an assistant coach with the South Carolina Gamecocks.

He’s known Downs forever. He played with and against Canton-bound talents. He’s seen today’s NFL players up close as an assistant coach with the Saints, Dolphins, Lions and Jets.

How will Caleb Downs translate to the pros? This past week, I caught up with Bly on the phone. Our convo is transcribed below.

We get into his game, his smarts, his future.

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You can give us the best perspective on what really makes Caleb possibly the best player in the entire draft. What makes him special?

Bly: He is. He is. And here’s the thing — the way I look at it — because I’ve been hearing some of the hoopla. He didn’t work out. People are questioning his speed. When you play as well as he played, you don’t need to work out. His film represents what he is. He’s done everything you can imagine as a college football player. The same way Travis Hunter didn’t need to work out, Caleb Downs doesn’t need to work out. And so again, if you know what you’re looking at when you evaluate tape, then if you go back and evaluate all his tapes since he started playing football, you’ll see the same human being on the football field. He’s the best player that’s on the field. And so you see correctly. That’s who he is.

On the flip side of it, the family that he comes from, he’s super intelligent, he’s super smart. That’s what people don’t really know. All of our family is super smart, 4.0 GPAs. My wife and I both went to Chapel Hill. His Mom and Dad both went to NC State. My wife’s brother went to NC State. He’s an attorney. So my wife, brother and sister both went to NC State and my wife went to Chapel Hill. Their parents worked for IBM for 30+ years and my mother-in-law went to private school as a kid. My father-in-law was really, really smart. So that was the standard in the house. So all of our kids had really, really good grades. They all went to college. They all graduated with almost 4.0 GPAs. And so that’s the other side of the story that people don’t know. And then you combine that with Gary and his family. Gary is a military baby. And so his work ethic is different. His faith — Gary’s a strong believer — is different. So all that’s poured into Caleb.

And then with him growing up in a super competitive family, Caleb was the Last of the Mohicans. My son, I’ve got a 17-year-old. Caleb and my son are the two youngest boys. And so Caleb had a chance to see everybody else. He got the best of everybody. Growing up in an athletic family, he’s always been the best player on the field. The other thing when people don’t realize— I don’t think a lot of kids do enough of — our kids played multiple sports. Caleb played baseball, he played basketball. And so all of those skillsets that he learned from playing those other sports, he applied them out there on the football field.

If you watch and dissect how fast he played on the football field, why do you need him to work out? He’s the real deal, man. He’s everything that people imagine. He’s more athletic than any other defensive player in the game. His instincts, his awareness, his smarts. They’re going to get every bit of the player they’re supposed to get when they draft him as a top 10 player. And that’s a multiple Pro Bowl type of player that has the ability to be a Hall of Fame player. I don’t expect anything less or anything different coming out of Caleb.

He surpassed everything that I’ve done and I’m in the College Football Hall of Fame. And he’ll one day be in the College Football Hall of Fame. He won the Thorpe Award. I went 0-for-2 with the Thorpe. I was the finalist twice. Didn’t win that. He won the national championship. He won a state championship in high school. So this guy has always won. He’s always been the best player on the field on a really, really good team. And so now they’re going to get one hand of a ball player once you hear his name called in a couple weeks.

You don’t even need to look at a highlight reel. You can pull up a full 60-minute game to understand his impact. Usually a safety makes a play here, a play there. But Caleb Downs is in the camera shot all game long. I’ve got to think that speaks to that intelligence. So even at an early age, in what ways did you see his smarts?

Bly: At nine years old, he was the most dominant player on the football field. So his football IQ — the plays he was able to make at nine years. The vision. The awareness. You can see that at an early age. He was doing things at 10 years old that grown folks don’t do. How do you know that he’s every bit of the player that we think he is? Well, he’s the quarterback on the football field. He talks to everybody. He gets everybody lined up. He communicates. You don’t see a lot of players in the generation communicating and doing some of those things. He’s cut from the old school. You see us 30 years ago, that’s the way we operate, that’s the way we move. And so you see some of that, man.

But then some of the players, people were questioning: “Why do we draft a safety that high?” Because he makes everybody around him better. He has the ability to intercept six balls. He has the ability to have 100 tackles. He has the ability to get you six, seven sacks. He has the ability to cause five, six fumbles. That’s the thing that separates him from the majority of the other defensive players in the draft. And I’m here to tell you, it’s all legit, man. I’m a guy that played four sports growing up. I was a guy that made plays all over the field from high school to college to the NFL. And one of the things that separated me from the rest of the guys I played with were my ball skills and my awareness and my instincts. He’s cut from that cloth. And so that was something you could see at an early age. He stood out on the field whenever he stepped in the field.

He was always the best player on any field he stepped on. And everybody said that. Even when they were recruiting him out of high school. I’ve been around significant football minds and guys that have been doing it for a long time. They said, “Dre, he’s the best football player that we’ve recruited in the last 30 years.”

Really?

Bly: Yeah. People say that. I don’t think they were just saying that to blow smoke because he was my nephew. Nah, when you’ve been around this game as long as you’ve been around the game, you see it. And you’ve got to believe what you see and don’t try to convince yourself that it’s something else because it’s not. And this is what happens when you’re dealing with analytics and these so-called “gurus” that think they understand the game. Well, shit, he didn’t work out. He didn’t run. He didn’t need to work out! If you dissect him — and understand what you see on tape — you see that he’s the fastest football player that laces those cleats up on Saturdays. So you don’t need to time him when he runs the 40.

And here’s the other thing. When I came out, I ran 4.48, 4.51. People said Dre’ Bly was timed in the 4.5 in the 40. Well, I had 43 career picks, caused 20 fumbles, had 150 breakups in the NFL. And then in college, I had 22 interceptions in three years. I made a lot of plays. And in high school, I had 14, 15 picks. I made a lot of plays. I didn’t need to be a 4.3. It was my instincts and my awareness and my savviness, ball savviness. That’s what allowed me to be the player that I was.

Caleb reminds me of that type of player. Super instinctive. He’s super aware. He’s super smart, which allow him to play faster than any other football player on the field.

In your era, you played against safeties who are in Canton. Obviously you’re blood, but at the same time, the film speaks for itself. Do you think that he’s got a game that rivals anybody?

Bly: He does. He does. Even coaching now and being around some of the athletes I’m around, if my nephew stays healthy, he has a chance to be really, really special because he checks all the boxes. He’s physical. His size, his instincts. His ability to tackle in the open field. You put him in any environment, he makes players around him better. It’s hard to pinpoint one particular person, but I see a mixture of Brian Dawkins. He’s pigeon-toed like Ed Reed with how he runs. And to sit here and say that you’re going to have as many interceptions as Ed Reed, that’s hard to say. But Ed Reed, it’s like Kobe Bryant. When you’re hot, you’re hot. It’s like when I had 13 interceptions my freshman year of college. I can’t duplicate that. I was hot that year. He’s going to make a lot of great football plays. He’s going to be in position to make a lot of plays. He’s going to make those plays. Whatever defense he lands on, he’s going to make that defense better. And if he stays healthy — which you can’t predict. You hope that every player that gets drafted can play 16, 17 games a year. But ability-wise, I know he’s different. He’s special. There haven’t been a lot of guys that’ve come up the way this man has come up and done the things that he’s done. He’s done more than me, and he’s going to be a damn good pro.

It sounds like he’s made of the right stuff. Eats, sleeps, breathes this sport. And that’s saying something today. You’re working through it right now in college. You’ve got to figure out who loves this sport. It’s not as guaranteed as it might’ve been back in your day. What does it look like up close with Caleb, being an old soul who genuinely loves it?

Bly: He is an old soul. My wife and his mom are sisters. She calls him “Dusty.” They say he’s an old soul. He eats and breaths and sleeps football. And that’s how our family is. Anything they set their mind to, they’re going to be all-in. There’s not a defensive system that he can’t understand, retain, learn. He’s super smart, super intelligent. And to me, if you have that intangible along with the skill-set, it’s going to be hard to be defeated. He’s the complete package. But yeah, everything that he does, he’s a hard worker. He’s as clean as it gets when it comes to an athlete. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t smoke. He trains all day, every day. He’s a Christian. He was raised correctly. Everybody around him — his uncles, aunts, they’re all married. His parents, his grandparents. He’s the complete package, man. And so everything that you’ve seen is a representation of how he was raised and what’s been around him. And I would say my brother- and sister-in-law have done a hell of a job with Caleb, and we’re super excited to see the flowers that he received from all the hard work that he’s put in.

The New York Giants make a lot of sense with what John Harbaugh is trying to instill. If I’m John Harbaugh, I’m thinking this is Kyle Hamilton+ because Caleb isn’t only a safety. You put him anywhere — slot, corner, linebacker. Man, that would make a lot of sense.

Bly: It would. That’s how the Ravens utilized Kyle Hamilton. And I’m cut from that cloth and Coach Harbaugh is, too. Defense wins championships. And when you’re drafting a player that high, you need instant impact. That’s what Caleb represents every time he steps on the field. If you go back and do your background, that’s who he’s been every single time he stepped on the field. It’s not like he surprised you one year. No, every time he stepped in the field, he’s been the best player. And he’s made everybody around him better. And then he fits the mold of being a top five, top six pick, a first-round draft pick to fit in the city of New York. He is what you want your first-round pick to represent. He’s going to do everything he’s supposed to do. And I’d be willing to bet everything. He’s not going to disappoint when it comes to the off the field because of how he was raised and how he moves and how he operates. And so hopefully he’s there. I’m saying hopefully because his dad was drafted with the Giants. So that would be a great story if the Giants drafted him after drafting his dad almost 30 something years ago.

So we’ll see, man. I’m rooting for him. I will be there with him in Pittsburgh. I’ll be there with him in the green room, and I’m looking forward to celebrating whichever team selects my nephew.

Be sure to see what NFL scouts told Bob McGinn in his series about Caleb Downs.

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