This is our second scouting report of draft season, after focusing on Alabama cornerback Domani Jackson in our first piece . Arizona’s Tacario Davis is another potential Day 2 cornerback selection, which
will be the range in which the Green Bay Packers will draft a new starter at the position this April, if they get a new starter, since they’re out first-round picks in the next two drafts because of the Micah Parsons trade.
Let’s hop right into it.
Background
Davis was not a highly-recruited player coming out of Long Beach, California, as he was listed as a three-star recruit on the 247Sports Composite. Overall, he was ranked the 1,140th player nationally in the 2022 class, good for the 107th cornerback and the 83rd overall player in California that year. For perspective, here are some schools that higher-ranked California high school recruits from his class went to: Harvard, Colorado State, San Jose State, San Diego State, Fresno State, Jackson State, Portland State, Boise State and UNLV.
As a prep, Davis’ only scholarship offers were Arizona, Arizona State and Kansas. After receiving an offer from Arizona in late January of his junior season in high school, he committed to the Wildcats less than a month later. He held that commitment throughout the process and enrolled at Arizona the summer after his senior year (this is a little less common in this era, as many recruits try to early enroll mid-way through what would have been their senior year of high school).
The former prep receiver and defensive back focused on the cornerback position at the college level. After only playing five games as a true freshman in 2022, Davis had his most productive season in his college career as a sophomore, when he registered 15 pass breakups and earned second-team All-Pac-12 honors after being an unknown coming into the year.
After that season, his head coach, Jedd Fisch, left to take the Washington job. Davis, like receiver Tetairoa McMillan (2025 8th overall pick) and offensive lineman Jonah Savaiinaea (2025 37th overall pick), stuck it out with a new coaching staff, only to go 4-8 (2-7 in Big 12 play) in 2024. Davis also played with Green Bay 2024 first-round pick Jordan Morgan at the college level.
After the 2024 season didn’t pan out as expected (for his team, he still made second-team All-Big 12), Davis was one of three Wildcats who transferred to Washington to reunite with Fisch in 2025. He has been a three-year starter at the college level. This year, he dealt with a rib injury and then a hamstring injury, which we’ll talk about in the scouting report section.
Video
Washington played their cornerbacks in the weirdest way I’ve ever seen the position deployed. Usually, cornerbacks either line up left or right, field (far side of the field) or boundary (short side of the field) or near/far to their team’s sideline. The Huskies used Davis as a player who was always at the top of the screen, relative to where the game was being filmed, except in his final appearance of the year versus Purdue (where he moved around a bit more).
This means that he was flipping sides of the field on a quarter-by-quarter basis, with his rotation not being determined until the coin flip, when a team chose which end they wanted to defend to start the game. I can’t say I’ve ever seen that before.
Because of this, Davis is the cornerback at the top of the screen in all of the clips I put together.
Scouting Report
Davis is going to measure in at the Senior Bowl next week and is expected to come in around 6’3” and 200 pounds. His length and ball production, on top of still being 21 years old until August, are going to be his big selling points at the next level.
The Senior Bowl will also be the first time that Davis will be able to show off his skills for scouts since November 15th, when he suffered his second of two injuries this year. He played the first two games of the season before landing on a football wrong while making an interception against UC Davis, which injured his ribs. That injury cost him a month of action. When he returned, he was able to play five consecutive games before a “severe hamstring pull” which left him sidelined for the final three games of the season, including the Huskies’ bowl game.
Here’s what head coach Jedd Fisch had to say about Davis’ status going into bowl action:
“We’ll have to work him out before the game,” UW coach Jedd Fisch said on Friday. “We don’t want to take any risk there, especially with the chance of the Senior Bowl, the Combine, the fact that he’s going to be such a highly drafted kid. We’ve got to make sure that he’s healthy. We don’t want to set him back.”
Per Sports Illustrated, Davis did practice with the team during their bowl prep for Boise State.
On the field, Davis looks to me like a classic Cover 3 cornerback, a long, ball skills guy who needs to use the sideline as a help defender to survive at the next level. He’s not the type of player you want covering crossers or playing man coverage (his acceleration and hips aren’t great), but he can play a sideline zone and is a pretty secure tackle, especially considering how high he plays.
If the Packers are going to run a Fangio-style defense under new defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon, one that sorts out coverages from off alignments and then basically converts into man coverage once receivers declare vertical intent, Davis would be a bit of a square peg in a round hole. He fits better in the Pete Carroll-Dan Quinn-Gus Bradley-Robert Saleh style of defense, one that plays true spot drop zones with vision on quarterbacks and puts more emphasis on ball production than tight coverage.
For Green Bay, this is probably a fourth-round value, but other teams will like him more than they should. For him to do well, he’ll need a good home that works around his skill set. From a Packers perspective, think of him as a Davon House-type player. House (6’0”, 195 pounds) was drafted in the fourth round in 2011 and made 14 starts on his rookie contract before signing with the Jacksonville Jaguars, where he started 15 games in 2015 and 4 in 2016. He returned to Green Bay in 2017, making 12 starts, before playing the final year of his career with the Packers in 2018, when he made no starts but got in three games before suffering a shoulder injury that left him on the injured reserve.
Here is what Bleacher Report wrote about Davis in 2024, when he had some top-50 buzz:
Tacario Davis projects as an early-round pick with the potential to become an impact player, especially in schemes that prioritize his length and physicality. His rare combination of length and athleticism makes him a standout, but his inconsistency in transitions and his struggles in off coverage and ball awareness will need refinement. If he can improve his technique, particularly in coverage transitions and ball skills, Davis has the potential to develop into one of the top cornerbacks at the next level.
They gave him a second-round grade at the time…and compared him to former Green Bay second-round pick Kevin King. I’m sure you guys will love to hear that.
