In the NFL, you learn quickly to distinguish between the athletes and the football players. Every April, the combine spits out freaks of nature who never amount to much more than a roster footnote. But every so often — and you have to train your eye to see it — a prospect comes along whose raw physical gifts are so obscene that you'd be committing football malpractice to ignore what he could become. Tyler Owens might be exactly that kind of player for the Washington Commanders in 2026.
The Numbers Don't Lie
The Washington Commanders safety doesn't yet have the household name recognition of a first-round pick, but the numbers he put up leading into the draft read like something you'd see pinned to the wall of an NFL scouting department, circled in red ink. A 4.30 forty. A 41-inch vertical tops among all safeties. A broad jump of 12 feet, 2 inches, which ranks second in the entire history of the NFL Scouting Combine. He was the fastest player clocked at the 2024 Shrine Bowl, topping out at 21.55mph. At 6'2" and 215 pounds, he has the frame to match that elite athleticism.
When you stack those numbers together, the player comparison that comes to mind immediately is Nick Emmanwori — another long, explosive safety whose testing profile suggested a coverage weapon capable of playing multiple roles. Justin Simmons is another name that stands out, a player who has developed from raw talent into one of the more complete safeties in the NFL. Those are meaningful comps, not flattering ones thrown around carelessly. The physical baseline is genuinely there.
The Catch — And Why It Doesn't Scare Me
The honest caveat is that Owens is raw. He's a developmental player in the truest sense of the phrase. The film doesn't yet match the stopwatch, and that gap is something Washington's coaching staff will need to close with deliberate, individualized attention. This isn't a plug-and-play situation. Owens needs reps, refinement in his reads and angles, and a coaching staff willing to invest the kind of personalized one-on-one development that separates players who test well from players who actually play well on Sundays.
That's where new defensive coordinator Dorante Jones enters the picture. A modern defensive system that deploys a rangy, sideline-to-sideline safety — dropping him into coverage, walking him up as a disguised blitzer, using his speed to take away the middle of the field — is precisely the environment where a player like Owens can grow into something dangerous. The scheme can create structure around his athleticism while the technical refinement catches up.
The Bottom Line
Let's not undersell what it means to be the most physically gifted player on your entire roster. That matters. Teams find ways to get their best athletes on the field. Coaches design packages tailored to players who possess unique abilities that no one else has.
The projection here is by no means a guarantee — they never are. But the foundation and raw athleticism are legitimate. If Washington's staff can put in the developmental work, Tyler Owens has everything physically required to become the kind of safety that offensive coordinators have to account for every single week.
That's not nothing. In this league, that's actually quite a lot.