The Ohio cornerback is a top recruit in his class.
Shaun Crawford is one of the top cornerbacks in the class of 2015.
Crawford, out of St. Edward High School in Lakewood, Ohio, stands 5'9.5 and weighs in at 170 pounds. He runs a reported 4.5-second 40-yard dash. As of July, he's rated as a consensus four-star prospect by 247Sports, Rivals, Scout and ESPN. The 247Sports Composite, a compilation of data from the four major recruiting services, lists him as the 103rd-best player in America, the 10th-best cornerback and the sixth-best player from the state of Ohio.
Crawford is drawing interest from top schools across the country. He holds scholarship offers from Notre Dame, Michigan, Florida State, Iowa, Miami, Michigan State, Ohio State, Penn State, Tennessee and Wisconsin, among others.
Note: Recruits commit and decommit throughout the process. No effort is made to note commitments or decommitments in these scouting reports. All we note is claimed offers at the time of evaluation.
Scouting by Derrell Warren (@yssd)
Crawford is a small but explosive athlete. Although he plays on the both sides of the ball for his high school team, he projects as a cornerback on the collegiate level. He carries good quickness and movement skills, compensating for a lack of ideal size.
A lot of Crawford’s high school tape is of him playing running back. However, a lot of the traits he displays with the ball in his hands transition favorably to the cornerback position in terms of short-area burst and change of direction.
The camp footage available on Crawford gives an opportunity to evaluate his skill set strictly at the cornerback position. A review of that film reveals that he is patient while a receiver gets into his route stem, maintains leverage, and does not open up his hips too quickly. Crawford flashes the lateral burst to mirror a receiver out of his breaks. Crawford competes through the entire route. Even if the pass makes contact with a receiver's hands he maintains focus on the ball and fights to jar it loose through the process of the catch.
While Crawford has recorded some really good track times, it doesn’t seem to translate quite as well in pads. No doubt, he flashes good speed on the field, but one would just stop a bit short of classifying it as elite.
Although he flashes good aggressiveness for his size, Crawford isn't ideally suited for press-man coverage. He would function best in off-man and zone concepts. This isn’t a bad thing at all. He simply doesn't have the size to bang with bigger, stronger wide receivers at the line of scrimmage on a down-by-down basis. And asking him to do so probably isn't the best way to optimize his ability since it’s not an ideal schematic fit. Crawford is balanced in his drop and displays good T-step burst when asked to drive on short routes or on balls thrown into the flat.
Physicality is another trait that the high school running back carries over to the defensive side of the ball. Crawford is committed run defender, unafraid to throw his body around in the run game. He’s more of a "thud" tackler at this stage, but that can be improved through coaching. The aggressive disposition is already there.