NFL Draft
2/18/25
6 min read
2025 NFL Draft: Why Malaki Starks is Falling Down Draft Boards
Georgia safety Malaki Starks has been penciled in as a top-five pick since Week 1 of his freshman season.
A five-star recruit from the 2022 class, Starks was a Day 1 starter in Georgia’s secondary. In the first quarter of the first game of his college career, Starks intercepted Bo Nix and introduced himself to a primetime audience.
From that moment, he’s been one of the best and most productive safeties in college football, and he entered this season as one of the top prospects in the 2025 Draft. Starks has begun to fall down a lot of media boards, however, and since Nov. 1, he’s dropped from fifth to 11th in the consensus rankings. Daniel Jeremiah and Lance Zierlein have him ranked 33rd and 52nd, respectively.
After finishing his 2024 tape, it’s clear that Starks isn’t the blue-chip-caliber prospect many considered him to be heading into the year, but a surface-level analysis of the box score misses a lot of context that’s crucial to his evaluation.
STATISTICS
On paper, this was the worst season of Starks' career. After two years of impressive ball production (five interceptions and 12 pass breakups from 2022-2023), he had career lows in interceptions (1) and pass breakups (2). For a safety to get selected in the first round, they need to generate turnovers, so it’s understandable that Starks would slide down boards after a quiet year.
He gave up six receptions of 25+ yards in 2024 and the most total yardage of any safety (453), more than double what he allowed in 2023 (200).
USAGE
In addition to being less productive, he allowed more explosive plays and was beaten in coverage more often in 2024. However, to fairly evaluate Starks' season, it’s critical to understand how he was used and how that usage contributed to his statistical decline. A scheme can either protect its defensive backs or expose them, and Starks’ role within Georgia’s defense was as high exposure as it gets for a college safety.
He’s being evaluated as a safety, but that’s not what he was playing on the majority of high-leverage passing downs. In 2024, he played 38 percent of his coverage snaps in the slot, up from 27 percent in 2023. On third and fourth down, he lined up in the slot on 60.7 percent of snaps, up from 31.7 percent in 2023.
And he wasn’t just zone-dropping into the hook and covering tight ends on 5-yard sit routes — the vast majority of the time, he was playing press-man coverage on receivers. Starks had 93 man coverage snaps in the slot this year, which was the second most among FBS safeties. That doesn’t even include all of the plays that are technically charted as zone, but his assignment ends up being single coverage on an island.
This is why raw coverage stats for defensive backs rarely tell the whole story. Almost every safety in college football allowed fewer yards than Starks because they weren’t put in nearly as many compromising positions. A deep safety in Cover-3 might get targeted once per game, but a slot corner in press-man is often covering the quarterback’s primary read and will be targeted heavily.
This role also limited his production, as he had significantly fewer opportunities to read the quarterback and make plays on the ball.
MAN COVERAGE
Starks played a much harder position that left him way more vulnerable to being targeted and giving up plays, but he actually performed a lot better than I would have expected him (or any safety) to.
It wasn’t perfect, but he put some eye-opening man coverage reps on tape that I honestly didn’t know he had in him. I don’t necessarily agree with this, but I’ve heard some teams have him graded as a cornerback.
He was particularly effective in covering routes on the vertical plane. He was fluid in opening his hips and gearing up to stay in phase with deep threats and never allowed much separation downfield.
But Starks isn’t a cornerback, and that was obvious when he had to mirror quick route runners and stay connected through intermediate breaks. He could potentially play outside cornerback in a Cover-3 scheme that just asked him to play one side of the field, but I wouldn’t want him trying to mirror Zay Flowers on a whip route, for example.
Ultimately, even though it made his stats look worse, some of the traits and skills he showed in man coverage this year actually made me like him more as a prospect. Safeties aren’t supposed to look like Patrick Surtain II in press-man, and Starks performed well overall, relative to my expectations.
DEEP SAFETY
If the only issue on Starks’ 2024 tape was that he gave up a few plays when he was outmatched in man coverage, he wouldn’t have fallen down boards to this degree.
The aspect of his 2024 tape that actually concerns me is how he looks when he is playing deep safety. His eye discipline, play recognition, and field vision were inconsistent, especially compared to his first two seasons.
On this play, he gets lured out of position by the play-action and gets beat for a 43-yard touchdown:
Here, he bites on the fake bubble screen, assuming that DeAndre Moore Jr. (No. 0) is blocking, and leaves him uncovered for a 41-yard touchdown:
On this play, he’s slow to break and takes a poor angle to the sideline, allowing a hole shot to Matthew Golden:
He gave up several explosive plays due to late recognition of a switch release or a hesitant trigger on a dig route:
He’s still a solid tackler, but his downhill pursuit angles were a bit erratic this year:
CONCLUSION
I don’t think Starks’ statistical decline is a valid cause for concern. He was essentially playing a different position this year, and his role was not conducive to high interception totals. His inconsistent play at deep safety, however, does raise some red flags, especially considering how he ended the 2023 season.
Starks had a good year overall in 2023, but most of his best plays came within the first five games, and he ended the season with a few rough performances. Those were outliers in his total resume this summer, but his 2024 tape solidified coverage discipline and zone anticipation as legitimate issues.
While I’m still a fan of Starks, we’re getting further and further removed from the last time he looked like a blue-chip safety for multiple consecutive games. The final year of tape is most important, and after completing my evaluation, I moved Starks from fifth (preseason) to 18th on my board.
His size, athleticism, ball skills, and versatility make him a top-20 player, but his awareness and instincts need more development than I initially thought.
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