Cornerback Darrell Luter Jr. didn’t draw a lot of notice coming out of Oak Grove High School in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He didn’t rate a bushel of offers coming out of Pearl River Community College. But coming out of South Alabama, Luter got picked in the fifth round of the NFL Draft by the San Francisco 49ers on April 29.

It’s a trajectory that Luter wants to continue to follow as a pro.

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“I feel like a lot of teams missed out on the skillset that I have, the abilities that I have that I’ve been given,” Luter said. “I also feel like they missed out on the stuff that I bring to the game. …

“From high school to Pearl, from Pearl to South, you see nothing but progression, and people just look back like, ‘Wow, why haven’t we recruited that guy or even taken that guy in?’”

What the 49ers saw in Luter, San Francisco assistant general manager Adam Peters said, went beyond the field.

“He was probably the most mature guy we met in the whole process,” Peters said. “He’s married, he’s a man already and he impressed the heck out of me. … And that was probably the thing that stood out with Luter the most.

“Obviously, the stuff on the field, we love his physicality, his strength, his upside. Junior-college guy who’s got a lot of upside still, so yeah, we’re really excited about Luter.”

Luter isn’t just a husband, he’s also a father.

“Since the day I knew I was projected to get drafted, to the day I got married, to the day I got a kid, everything’s just been building on top of each other,” Luter said. “It continues to motivate me. It adds onto the stuff I was already motivated from in the past, so it just keeps building up. It’s very unexplainable, man.”

The word the San Francisco scouts used for Luter the most seemed to be “strong.”

“He’s very strong,” said Tariq Ahmad, the 49ers’ director of college scouting. “He was very sticky at the Senior Bowl. He fit in very well down there against some of the top competition.”

Luter said he tries to use his strength to make receivers uncomfortable.

“Being close up and in press, it allows me to put my hands on early,” Luter said. “It allows me to be able to rough those receivers up and get them into their routes sooner than they would want to. That’s something that I’ve done since I was little. I’ve been doing that coverage, especially press, my whole football career.”

Peters said the combination gave Luter two qualities that would help him continue to improve in the NFL.

“It’s a hard game,” Peters said. “The NFL is really hard, so you’ve got to be tough, you’ve got to be mature in order to do this. It’s your job, so we found on our team, the mature guys do really, really well. You know, the guys that are physical, that are tough do really well, and he fit that bill.”

At the top of the depth chart, cornerback was not a position of need for the 49ers. Charvarius Ward and Deommodore Lenoir return for a defense that yielded the fewest points in the NFL and the fewest yards in the NFC in 2022.

San Francisco lost former Davidson High School standout Jimmie Ward in free agency to the Houston Texans after he handled the slot-corner duties for the 49ers last season. To take his place, San Francisco signed Isaiah Oliver, who played 349 defensive snaps in 12 games for the Atlanta Falcons last season.

The 49ers also lost Emmanuel Moseley, who left for the Lions in free agency after starting the first five games of the 2022 season. A torn anterior cruciate ligament sent Moseley to the sidelines last year.

Before the draft, Samuel Womack, who played 146 defensive snaps as a fifth-round rookie in 2022, might have been San Francisco’s top depth at cornerback, but the 49ers chose only one player at the position, making Luter the first South Alabama defensive player chosen in an NFL Draft.

“At the Senior Bowl, he really stood out to us,” Ahmad said. “We thought he separated himself from a lot of different prospects there.”

Luter plans to be able to play wherever the 49ers need him.

“I’m very versatile,” Luter said. “I play both nickel and outside corner. I can play both. Of course, a majority of my career I have played outside, but I’ve also been reintroduced a couple of times back at nickel since high school, so I can play both positions. It doesn’t matter which one as long as I’m able to help out the team in any way.”

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.