Fuck it..
Here are the rankings.
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Green Bay Packers cornerback Jaire Alexander tops PFF's outside cornerback ranking ahead of the 2021 NFL season, with Los Angeles Rams superstar Jalen Ramsey trailing closely behind.
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It hasn’t taken Alexander very long to establish himself as one of the league’s best coverage cornerbacks. We started to see signs of the Louisville product's playmaking ability in 2019, as his 16 forced incompletions ranked second at the position. However, he was overly aggressive at times and susceptible to giving up the big play. A Week 5 matchup with
Amari Cooper and Dallas put that on display.
Alexander was still the same playmaker in 2020, but he was much more stingy in coverage, allowing just 353 receiving yards all season — including Green Bay’s two postseason games — despite logging nearly 600 coverage snaps. The result was a season where Alexander was worth 1.4 wins above a replacement-level player, almost a full half-win more than any other cornerback.
Ramsey has been one of the best cornerbacks in the league since Jacksonville drafted him fifth overall in the 2016 NFL Draft. He’s never recorded a PFF grade lower than 70.0 — impressive consistency for a cornerback often tasked with tough assignments — and is coming off the best PFF grade since his second year in the league. Opposing offenses simply weren’t able to attack him in coverage.
After being charged with eight receptions allowed in Week 1 against the
Dallas Cowboys, Ramsey proceeded to allow just 24 receptions over the remainder of the regular season, giving up fewer than 25 receiving yards in 11 games. The ability to limit production like Ramsey did against top-flight talent is invaluable for the Los Angeles Rams defense.
We considered putting Humphrey atop the list of the best slot cornerbacks in the NFL, given that he has spent the majority of his snaps lined up in the slot over the past two seasons filling the void left by an injured
Tavon Young. Humphrey’s seamless inside-outside versatility is a big reason why he ranks so highly here.
The fifth-year cornerback out of Alabama has recorded at least 800 coverage snaps in the slot and out wide throughout his NFL career. He also ranks in at least the 87th percentile in coverage grades at both alignments. The most impressive part is that it all comes in a man-heavy Baltimore defense — few cornerbacks in the league possess that kind of ability.
Howard is one of the best playmaking cornerbacks that the NFL has to offer. Since entering the league in 2016, 18.7% of his targets in coverage have resulted in a pass breakup or interception, leading all cornerbacks who have been targeted at least 150 times over those five years. Howard’s 2020 performance put that playmaking ability on full display, with double-digit pass breakups and interceptions to go along with an 89.6 coverage grade.
Bradberry put up solid performances against a difficult slate of NFC South cornerbacks across the first four seasons of his career with the
Carolina Panthers, but he took a clear step forward in his first year with the Giants last season. Bradberry was the fourth-most valuable cornerback in the league in 2020 per PFF WAR, with career-best coverage numbers across the board.
The former Samford Bulldog put up one of the better performances of any cornerback in the league against
Allen Robinson II, allowing just one reception on six targets with three pass breakups and an interception in that Week 2 matchup.
