Scott Gulbransen
For years, Raider Nation has watched the team’s secondary get picked apart by quarterbacks who had no business having good days. Some of those guys went on to have careers specifically because they caught Las Vegas on the wrong week. It stopped being funny a long time ago.
Rob Leonard walks into this defensive coordinator job with a real problem on his hands in the secondary, and I don’t think anyone inside that building is pretending otherwise. The good news is that the cornerback class at this year’s combine is legitimately deep. We’re talking multiple guys who could come in and start immediately. That matters a lot for a franchise that hasn’t been able to say that about a drafted corner in longer than I care to remember.
General Manager John Spytek has picks and cap space. If he sees a corner he loves and needs to get back into the first round to get him, I wouldn’t be shocked. Not even a little.
Here are five guys I’ll be watching, and you should too, all week at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis.
Mansoor Delane | LSU
Start here. Just start here. Delane went the entire 2025 college season without allowing a touchdown or drawing a penalty. One of the most consistent players in this entire class top to bottom. Daniel Jeremiah said as much, and I happen to agree with him. He’s 6-1, 187 pounds, plays press, plays zone, tackles in the run game, and quarterbacks spent most of last season just throwing it somewhere else. That’s the highest compliment you can give a corner. Eight interceptions and four forced fumbles in his college career tell you he’s not just surviving out there, he’s hunting. The 40 time this week is going to be appointment viewing. If he runs the way scouts think he can, he’s gone before pick 15 and the Raiders better have a plan for that, if they want to be super aggressive. It’s a long shot.
Jermod McCoy | Tennessee
Some people have McCoy as the top corner in this class. I get it. Before he tore his ACL and missed all of 2025, the tape was genuinely special. He racked up 16 passes defended and six interceptions over two seasons and has a physical and instinctive presence in a way that made you do double-takes. The ACL is the only reason there’s any uncertainty here at all. Indianapolis is essentially his entire audition. Medical evaluations first, then watch how he moves in drills, if he does participate. There are still some questions about whether he will. The Raiders need to see not just whether he can run a good 40, but whether his hips are right, whether he’s planting and driving without any hesitation. A clean bill of health and a strong workout and he’s right back in the first-round conversation. Any doubt at all and he falls. High stakes stuff.
Avieon Terrell | Clemson
His brother A.J. starts for the Falcons. You’d think that would be a fun trivia fact and nothing more, but honestly, watch Avieon play and you’ll see it. That type of football IQ didn’t come from nowhere. He’s 5-11 and he’s going to play the nickel in the NFL, full stop. But what he does from that spot is worth paying for. Twenty-one passes defended, eight forced fumbles the last two seasons, and he’ll come downhill and hit you in the run game in a way that bigger corners don’t bother with. The 3-cone drill is where I want to see him (I know, 3-cone drill). Slot corners who can really move tend to announce themselves in that drill specifically and Terrell has the quickness to make people stop and pay attention.
Brandon Cisse | South Carolina
This is the one I keep coming back to as a pure combine watch. Athleticism through the roof. Fast, twitchy, the kind of guy who looks different from everyone else when the pads come off and the drills start. The knock on his film is that he’s more comfortable in zone than man right now, which is real and fair. But the combine was practically invented for prospects like Cisse — guys whose physical tools jump off the screen in a controlled environment. If he goes sub-4.4 and kills the agility numbers, the zone coverage conversation gets a lot quieter real fast. The Raiders need speed in that secondary. He has it.
Colton Hood | Tennessee
Nobody is going to make a highlight reel of Colton Hood’s combine workout. That’s not what he’s about. Tennessee played a ton of zone and Hood just quietly did his job week after week and competed at the line, played the ball well, got physical in run support in a way that coaches at the next level genuinely love. He’s a Day 2 pick who I think starts in the NFL before his second season is done. For a Raiders team that likely needs more than one corner out of this draft, Hood is the kind of value pick that makes a draft class. You take Delane or McCoy early if you can get there, and then you grab Hood on Saturday and feel good about it.
The secondary has cost this team wins for years. This week is where the rebuild of that unit actually begins. Spytek and his staff will be watching these guys very closely.
