Picking Great Cornerbacks: Week Two

Tom Kislingbury

In my opinion, cornerback is the toughest position to predict in fantasy. Scoring systems vary wildly with some league’s just rewarding tackles whilst others heavily score against passes defended, and stats themselves are fairly streaky with corners. Interceptions and return yards are the biggest event for them, but they happen rarely and it’s pretty much impossible to predict them.

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Generally with the position people take one of a few common approaches:

  • Play matchups. Try to pick different players each week who are facing high-volume passing attacks.
  • Go after corners with lots of tackles and hope they continue to pile them up.
  • Pick corners you like, stick with them and hope it pays off over the season.
  • Just guess.

Earlier in the off-season I outlined my approach to corners. It’s a fairly basic approach but I believe it will pay dividends. It’ll start to become clearer as we get more data of course but I wanted to share it now. The steps are as follows:

  1. Pick corners that are on the field
  2. Pick the bad player
  3. Pick CBs on teams with favourable schemes
  4. Pick players with ball skills
  5. Pick sound tacklers

Step One: Pick corners who are on the field

Here’s a list of every corner in the NFL that so far has averaged over 55 snaps per game:

fig 1 snaps

There are currently 49 players getting the sort of volume we want. That’s roughly one and a half per NFL team. If you’re playing someone not on this list you’re hoping for extremely high efficiency.

Step Two: Pick the bad player

We really want number two corners here as NFL offenses tend to avoid the number ones. But for speed’s sake I just removed all corners from step one with a PFF grade of 80.0 or higher. It leaves us with the following players:

fig 2 grade

This obviously excludes some good players, but on the whole we’re chasing volume so I can live with that.

Step Three: Pick CBs on teams with favourable schemes

It’s too early in the season to really work from efficiency so for now I’m leaving this step out.

Step Four: Pick players with ball skills

We want players who can get their hands on the ball. So I took the list from the previous stage and took out everyone who is yet to register either a pass defended or an interception (15 players). That step leaves us with these 17 players:

fig 3 cover plays

Again it’s possible that some of those players we removed will be good options but we can always add them in again later in the season.

Step Five: Pick sound tacklers

I then looked at total tackles (solos and assists) for all the players from the previous stage and removed anyone with fewer than eight tackles. That was five players who were taken out and left us with this list of twelve corners:

fig 4 final

And that’s the list of players I think currently look like good IDPs. Let’s look at them in slightly more detail.

PJ Williams, NO

The Saints defense can’t stop anyone and Williams is going to be targeted relentlessly until they can. Williams’ 12 solo tackles show how much he’s being picked on. With Marshon Lattimore hurt this is only going to get more obvious in the next week or two.

Eli Apple, NYG

The Giants have a really solid defense but the weak link is Apple who looks nothing like a first round pick so far. He has ten solo tackles showing that teams would much rather throw at him over Janoris Jenkins, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie or Landon Collins.

Kyle Fuller and Marcus Cooper, CHI

The Bears. Oh dear. The front seven looks like a great unit, but the secondary is bad so teams unsurprisingly pass a lot on them. So far these two teams have 19 solo tackles but just one assist between them. That tells me they’ve been picked on when they’ve been on islands.

Justin Bethel, ARI

Whoever plays opposite Patrick Peterson is going to get balls thrown at them. Bethel is fine as an NFL corner but clearly he’s a good option to target on a team with mostly excellent defenders in space.

Josh Norman, WAS

This is slightly surprising to me but of course Norman plays a lot of zone coverage meaning he can break and flow to the ball. His 3 passes defended and seven solo tackles prove that.

AJ Bouye, JAX

Bouye is playing well after switching AFC South teams in free agency but the Jaguars defense is just facing a high volume. Bouye has managed 11 solos so far just due to a lot of completed passes against the team.

Jalen Mills, PHI

We always knew the Eagles had a bad group of corners and Mills is no surprise. Given the ferocious pass rush, teams are having to get the ball out quick against them so Mills has profited with playing against a lot of fast-developing routes.

Robert Alford, ATL

Alford has quietly looked pretty bad this year whilst Desmond Trufant has been excellent opposite him. Alford has ten solos as a result so far.

EJ Gaines, BUF

Gaines is somewhat unlucky to be here given his solid start but the Bills are somewhat similar to the Eagles in that a good pass rush is forcing quick completions for short gains. That means plenty of tackles for corners.

Adoree’ Jackson, TEN

Jackson is the classic IDP corner target. A rookie who’s getting victimised because of his inexperience but can do just enough to make the tackle. His return ability is just an added benefit and he’s likely going to manage a few long returns over the season.

Casey Hayward, LAC

Yet another player who features on the back of a top pass rush. Playing with Joey Bosa and Melvin Ingram is clearly helping Hayward as is his volume. He’s played 133 snaps so far.

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tom kislingbury