Lions draft review podcast: What are early expectations for Ifeatu Melifonwu?

If you haven’t been listening, we’ve been running a Detroit Lions 2021 NFL Draft review series over on our podcast feed. Every week, we host a college beat writer to talk about one of the Lions’ draft picks and explain everything about their college career and their expectations for that player’s NFL trajectory.

We’ve already had episodes on Penei Sewell (here), Levi Onwuzurike (here), and Alim McNeill (here).

This week, we continued into the third round of the draft and talked about former Syracuse cornerback Ifeatu Melifonwu with John Cassillo of Nunes Magician.

Melifonwu’s career at Syracuse wasn’t flashy, but as Cassillo points out, it was his consistency that truly made him an impact player on the field. But given his unique and elite physical traits, it’s hard to exactly track where he will play at the NFL level.

Cassillo gives us everything we need to know: what kind of player he was at Syracuse, who he is as a person, what sort of improvement we saw throughout his college career, and what makes him different from his brother, Obi Melifonwu.

Then Chris and I break down Cassillo’s profile on him and talk about expectations for Melifonwu with the Lions both in Year 1 and beyond. Listen to our conversation below:

As always, you can catch the podcast on your favorite podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or iHeartRadio. Most podcasts are also available to watch on our YouTube and Twitch pages, which feature bonus between-segments content.