The best draft prospect cornerbacks in every type of coverage

When you’re looking to add a cornerback to your roster via free agency, trade, or the draft, you had better consider scheme fit and skill sets, or you’re basically hurling free agent money, the players and/or picks you gave up in a trade, and/or draft capital, right out the window.

Negative examples abound, but let’s go with former Chargers and Titans cornerback Desmond King, an impending free agent in the 2021 league year.

Before the November trade that sent him from Los Angeles to Tennessee, King had allowed 10 receptions on 15 targets for 60 yards, 47 yards after the catch, no touchdowns, no interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 74.3. With the Titans, King allowed 27 catches on 39 targets for 312 yards, 192 yards after the catch, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 119.8.

The Titans, who allowed a league-high 23 touchdowns and grabbed just one interception when playing man coverage per Sports Info Solutions, found themselves getting splattered all season on defense due to a negligible pass rush and very little idea of how to best use their defensive backs.

The Chargers, who allowed 20 touchdowns and had eight interceptions in zone coverage, obviously had a better bead on the marriage of personnel and scheme.

When playing zone last season, King allowed 13 catches on 16 targets for 85 yards, no touchdowns, and no interceptions. When playing man last season, King allowed 12 catches on 21 targets for 169 yards, two touchdowns, and no interceptions.

Sometimes, this isn’t hard.

“He’s a player that we felt like could help us, come in and play DB. He’s been disruptive. He’s an effective blitzer and has done some things,” Titans head coach Mike Vrabel said of King after the Titans acquired him. “From everything that we’ve heard, he’s a player that loves football and is competitive that has played in a number of spots and in the kicking game.”

So… you trade for a guy, you make him play the primary coverages he can’t handle, and now, he’s a free agent. That’s one way to waste a 2021 sixth-round pick.

On the whole, King is an above-average primary slot cornerback who can stay sticky with receivers on short and intermediate routes, and he did cause a lot of incompletions on extended plays. Zone-heavy teams like the Seahawks, Buccaneers, Browns, Panthers, or Giants should definitely give King’s agents a call. Man-heavy teams like the Titans (who should be banned from acquiring zone cornerbacks for at least the next three seasons as penance for what they did to this guy), Saints, Cardinals, Lions, and Dolphins should probably stay away.

Moving to the draft, let’s look at two examples of weird fits from the 2020 season. Alabama’s Trevon Diggs and Louisiana Tech’s Amik Robertson were two of the NCAA’s most dominant man-coverage cornerbacks in the 2019 season, but each player was selected by zone-heavy teams whose overall defenses resembled car crashes more often than not.

In 2019 for Nick Saban, Diggs allowed seven completions on 23 targets in man coverage for 73 yards, no touchdowns, two interceptions, and a preposterous opponent quarterback rating of 5.03. But Stefon Diggs’ younger brother was unfortunately selected with the 51st overall pick in the second round by the Cowboys, who had just hired defensive coordinator Mike Nolan, and Nolan was preparing to do a heavy waste job on a defense that had resided in the middle of the pack before his arrival.

When Diggs operated in coverages that allowed him to use his instincts, aggressiveness, and athleticism, he was great. When he was presented with Nolan’s overcomplicated muck… not so much. Dallas played 364 of their 512 pass defense snaps in zone coverage, and Diggs allowed 45 catches on 76 targets for 650 yards, 198 yards after the catch, six touchdowns, three interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 96.9. Perhaps Dan Quinn, Dallas’ new defensive coordinator, will give Diggs the right schematic tools to work with, and bring out the best in the player.

Robertson, who tied for the NCAA lead with four picks in man coverage, was selected by the Raiders in the fourth round of the 2020 draft. The Raiders played just 175 of their 579 pass coverage snaps in any iteration of man coverage, and Robertson had just 35 cornerback snaps all season.

In pass coverage, on 28 snaps, Robertson allowed five catches on six targets for 76 yards, 27 yards after the catch, one touchdown, no interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 158.3 — the highest passer rating any NFL quarterback can achieve. Perhaps Gus Bradley, Las Vegas’ new defensive coordinator, will give Robertson the right schematic tools to work with, and bring out the best in the player.

You get the idea.

In any event, this need for the player and the playbook to match — and the repeated examples of teams valuing traits over specific skill sets at one of the NFL’s most crucial positions — had me wondering which draft-eligible cornerbacks were the best in which kinds of coverage. A bit of pre-draft homework NFL teams should be doing as well. Thanks to the Sports Info Solutions database, we can all do just that.

Cover-0: Patrick Surtain II, Alabama

(Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports)

Cover-0 -- man coverage with no safety help up top -- is one of the more challenging coverages for any cornerback. It's a generally blitz-heavy scheme in which outside defenders have no help against receivers, unless they're on the side of the slot defender and there's some sort of coverage switch based on two- or three-man route combinations. Outside of that, if your technique is off at all, and you can't re-distribute the receiver to go where you want him to go (especially on vertical routes), you are toast from the snap. Surtain, however, had no such issues -- he was targeted five times in Cover-0 last season, allowing one catch for 13 yards, two pass deflections, and an opponent passer rating of 39.58. Surtain isn't the fastest cornerback in this class, especially when it comes to following receivers on deep vertical routes, and that's about the only ding you'll find with him. He excels in Cover-0 because Alabama's blitzers tend to get home in jailbreak packages, and also because he can work a receiver all over the field and to the boundary, where he'll take inside position and erase any potential big plays. If you're throwing the fade ball against Surtain, you could be in for a very long day.

Best NFL scheme fits: Baltimore Ravens, Kansas City Chiefs, Miami Dolphins, New Orleans Saints, Arizona Cardinals.

Cover-1: Jaycee Horn, South Carolina

(Jeff Blake-USA TODAY Sports)

Cover-1 -- man coverage underneath with one deep safety -- is a primary coverage in today's NFL, and nobody ran it better in the NCAA in 2020 than Horn, the son of former Chiefs, Saints, and Falcons receiver Joe Horn. Opposing quarterbacks targeted Horn nine times in Cover-1 last season, and they quickly came to regret it, as he allowed just one catch for 14 yards. Horn also picked off one pass in Cover-1, dropped another interception, had three pass deflections, and allowed an opponent passer rating of 0.00. That's about as good as it gets, and it represented a massive uptick from 2019, when he allowed eight receptions on 19 targets in Cover-1 for two touchdowns with no interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 102.08. Horn has the perfect athletic temperament to be a press defender at any level of football. An obnoxiously aggressive player (and I mean that as a positive), Horn will tie opposing receivers up from the first step as long as he's able to get on them from start to finish. Like most bigger, more aggressive cornerbacks, he can be beaten by quicker receivers in shorter spaces with angular routes. But if your primary team need is for a mercenary eraser with a wolverine's mentality, this is the guy you want in this class ahead of anyone else. Just ask former Clemson receiver Tee Higgins (selected by the Bengals in with the 33rd overall pick in the 2020 draft) about his reps against Horn in 2019. Higgins caught three passes for 101 yards and two touchdowns against South Carolina's other overmatched defenders, but Horn just erased him on a deep seam route from Trevor Lawrence...

...and did the same on a quick slant in the end zone. That's just how he rolls.

Best NFL scheme fits: Arizona Cardinals, New England Patriots, Los Angeles Rams, Miami Dolphins, Baltimore Ravens.

Cover-2: Marlon Character, Louisville

Watching Character throw his body around on the field reminds me of what Randy Cross once said about Ronnie Lott: "He doesn't care about his own body; why should he care about yours?" Not that Character finds himself in Lott's rarefied air, but he does have a lot on the ball when it comes to Cover-2 -- two deep safeties with zone coverage underneath. Last season, he was targeted six times in Cover-2, allowing just one catch for five yards, no touchdowns, and this interception against Virginia out of two-high coverage.

Character experienced a massive uptick in efficiency last season. In his first two years with the Cardinals. In his first two seasons, Character allowed 18 catches on 26 targets for 263 yards, 116 yards after the catch, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 127.6. But in 2020, he turned that around, giving up 13 catches on 29 targets for 144 yards, 28 yards after the catch, one touchdowns, one interception, eight pass deflections, and an opponent passer rating of 57.3 in 208 coverage snaps. He made this list in both Cover-2 and Tampa-2 because he's a good closer in off-coverage, converging quickly to the ball. Best NFL scheme fits: Indianapolis Colts, Minnesota Vikings, Kansas City Chiefs, Seattle Seahawks, Pittsburgh Steelers.

2-Man: Patrick Surtain II, Alabama

(Gary Cosby Jr./The Tuscaloosa News via AP)

In the 2020 season, opponents threw five times to Surtain as the primary target when Alabama was playing 2-Man coverage -- two deep safeties with man coverage underneath. On those five targets, Surtain allowed one catch for 12 yards, no touchdowns, no interceptions, two passes defensed, and an opponent passer rating of 39.58. Nick Saban's defense lined up in 2-Man on 30 targets, allowing 17 catches for 169 yards, one touchdown, two dropped interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 83.90. In 2019, Surtain was targeted three time in 2-Man, and he didn't allow a single reception. Meanwhile, opponents were targeting teammates Xavier McKinney and Trevon Diggs more often in 2-Man for whatever reason, which resulted in no touchdowns and two interceptions on 13 total attempts. He started for Saban as a true freshman, and as shown on this interception against Mississippi State quarterback Will Rogers (no, really), Surtain has a highly advanced sense of how to match and follow receivers through their routes. He also has the confidence to jump routes at any time, which is a reflection of his technical expertise. Surtain is playing bail out of the gate, but he flips to cover without any wasted motion. Mike Leach's quarterback doesn't stand a chance as Surtain returns the pick 25 yards for a touchdown. Surtain can also play zone, but if you want a guy who can match from the line of scrimmage and stay sticky through nearly any route, there are few better.

Per Pro Football Focus, Surtain has 662 snaps in press coverage over the last two seasons, 199 more than any other defender in the nation. There are specific reasons for that. Best NFL scheme fits: New Orleans Saints, Detroit Lions, Kansas City Chiefs, Pittsburgh Steelers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Cover-3: Tre Norwood, Oklahoma

(Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports)

We're cheating a bit when calling Norwood a cornerback, but it's okay, because he's more than just a safety. He originally committed to Louisville, but backed out over a change in the program's defensive coaching staff. Instead, he played cornerback for the Sooners in 2017 and 2018, missed the 2019 season to a torn ACL, and returned as a safety in name for the 2020 season. In truth, Norwood was a new-wave multi-position defender -- per Pro Football Focus, he played 81 snaps at free safety (where he also played 52 snaps in 2018), 180 snaps in the box, 33 snaps at outside corner, 179 snaps at slot defender, and five snaps on the defensive line. Regardless of position, Norwood was a ridiculous ballhawk in Cover-3 -- he led the nation in that coverage with four interceptions, the same number of catches he allowed on 12 targets. Norwood has the quickness and athleticism to play the deep third, but were I his NFL defensive coordinator, I'd strongly consider putting him in the slot for a high percentage of his snaps. Whether free or slot, Norwood processes very well as long as all the action is in front of him. He's not an ideal press defender, but there's enough other things he does to make him a good fit in any other capacity.

Best NFL scheme fits: Seattle Seahawks, Carolina Panthers, New York Giants, Las Vegas Raiders, Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Cover-4: Jason Pinnock, Pitt

(Ken Ruinard-USA TODAY Sports)

Pinnock isn't on a lot of radars right now -- if you look for his name in any draft guide, you may be left wanting. And I have no idea where NFL teams have him on their boards. But he did have a pretty decent 2020 season against legitimate offenses. Specifically, against Clemson on November 28, when he allowed two catches on six targets for 32 yards, 15 yards after the catch, two pass deflections, and an opponent passer rating of 52.3. Not bad when the opposing quarterback is that Trevor Lawrence guy. Pinnock did allow five touchdown passes last season in 347 coverage snaps (he'll want to burn the Boston College tape), but when the Panthers played Cover-4 -- zone coverage in which each of four defenders are responsible for a quarter of the deep third -- Pinnock had that on lock. There, he allowed just two catches on 13 targets for 36 yards, no touchdowns, two of his three interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 66.7. This was especially impressive given that Pinnock was playing on a Pitt defense that did not finish well in Football Outsiders' advanced metrics, and had coverage busts all over the place. Here, Pinnock (No. 15) works late on a blitz, apparently thinks he's handing coverage off... and then, things go very badly

Pinnock isn't a first-day player, but the right team with the right scheme could get a real steal here. He has developmental potential as a zone and match cornerback with boundary traits. Any of the teams listed below, with high Cover-4 rates in 2020, could be contenders. https://twitter.com/PFF_College/status/1359728872577638402 Best NFL scheme fits: Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers, New York Jets, Denver Broncos, Washington Football Team.

Cover-6: Asante Samuel Jr., Florida State

(AP Photo/Mark Wallheiser)

With the Patriots, Eagles, and Falcons from 2003-2013, Asante Samuel the First was known as an occasional gambler, and perhaps the route-jumpingest cornerback of his era. Samuel led the NFL with 10 interceptions in 2006 for New England, and did the same for the Eagles in 2009 with nine picks. Samuel Jr. hasn't been a ballhawk on that level just yet, but in 2020, he allowed just 19 catches on 32 targets for 179 yards, 81 yards after the catch, one touchdown, three interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 46.2. Not bad for a guy who was overlooked as an outside cornerback due to his 5-fot-10, 186-pound frame. (It does behoove us to mention that Samuel Jr.'s tape shows a TON of near-interceptions and a few dropped interceptions, so maybe that'll come due in the NFL). You do not want to bet against Samuel Jr., you do not want to automatically peg him as a slot guy because of his size, and you especially do not want to do either one of these things when Samuel Jr. is playing Cover-6 -- "quarter/quarter/half" coverage in which a defense plays Cover-4 (Quarters) to one side, and Cover-2 to the other. Samuel didn't play a ton of Cover-6 in 2020, but if we rewind to the 2019 season, he allowed three completions on five such targets for 21 yards, no touchdowns, one interception, and an opponent passer rating of 30.0. The interception in question came against Virginia in the Seminoles' third game of the 2019 season. It appears that Samuel is playing the Cover-2 side of the formation, and he does a great job of following the deep route at first, and then moving quickly to jump the short stuff. We think dad would be proud.

Best NFL scheme fits: Green Bay Packers, Los Angeles Chargers, Chicago Bears, Cleveland Browns, Denver Broncos.

Tampa-2: Tre Norwood, Oklahoma

(Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports)

Not that NFL teams play a lot of Tampa-2 anymore -- the league has moved on decidedly from the first decade of the new millennium, when everyone was copying the Tony Dungy tree and dropping their linebackers back 20 yards whether their linebackers could actually do that or not. However, if that's your cup of tea, the aforementioned Mr. Norwood had one interception on one target in that particular defense. This could make him especially attractive to the Texans, whose new defensive coordinator Lovie Smith made his bones on Tampa-2 back in the day. That said, we are of the opinion that the Texans should never run Tampa-2, based on this play against the Colts. When you have linebacker Tyrell Adams covering T.Y. Hilton 40 yards downfield, it's time to rip that part of the playbook right the heck out of there. https://twitter.com/Colts/status/1340757043284684801 Best NFL scheme fits: Houston Texans, Los Angeles Rams, Dallas Cowboys, New Orleans Saints, Philadelphia Eagles.

So... where the heck is Caleb Farley?

(Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports)

A fair question, as Farley may be the best cornerback in this draft class -- at worst, most people have him paired with either Surtain or Horn as CB1 or CB2. Farley, who opted out of the 2020 season, is great in a lot of coverages -- he was almost as dominant as Surtain in Cover-0 in 2019 (one catch on four targets for seven yards, no touchdowns, and one interception). But he allowed his one touchdown in 2-Man, so he wasn't goin to beat Surtain there. Farley was also good in Cover-4 (four catches on nine targets for 63 yards, no touchdowns, and no interceptions), and he's obviously a better overall player than Jason Pinnock, but I'd give Pinnock the edge in that particular coverage. Farley also allowed no receptions on three Cover-6 targets, but I'd still give Winfield Jr. the nod there. So, the best thing to say about Caleb Farley -- and this shows up on tape -- is that you can stick him in either man or zone coverage, and he'll be just fine. A rare attribute at the college level, and perhaps Farley is the one cornerback in the 2021 class who's coach-proof from a schematic mismatch perspective. If that's the case, I'm quite sure he won't care about the snub.

1

1