• D.J. Reed takes the highest spot: Reed has been a mannequin of consistency over the previous 5 years, incomes protection grades between 71.4 and 80.4. In 2024, he’s elevated his recreation even additional, forcing an incompletion on 36.4% of his targets whereas permitting simply 0.29 yards per protection snap and solely three first downs all season.
• Christian Benford‘s outstanding season continues: The Bills nook was focused simply as soon as in Week 5. He allowed a 3-yard catch and made a defensive cease. He has allowed a formidable 0.15 yards per protection snap and a passer ranking of simply 20.1 when focused.
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Estimated studying time: 4 minutes
If quarterback is an important place on the soccer subject, then limiting the effectiveness of that participant is an important factor a protection can do.
A crew can do that in two methods: It can strain the passer to disrupt his timing, rhythm and accuracy, or it will possibly shut down the opposing receivers.
Each week, after each NFL recreation is graded and reviewed, PFF will test in on the highest cornerbacks of the 2024 season. These rankings will drastically change over the primary month, as one interception, one missed deal with or one deep completion can dramatically alter a participant’s grade when the pattern measurement is small. But as snap counts rise, the grades will stabilize, and we’ll get a clearer image of the league’s finest corners.
Last 12 months, these rankings mixed PFF protection grades with our Successful Coverage Over Expected (SCOE) metric, which measures how nicely every protection defender carried out on non-targeted protection snaps. We grade each protection defender’s means to stop separation, whether or not they’re focused on the play or not.
These rankings will make the most of that very same information this 12 months however with play-level normalization and expectation changes. Matching up with a WR is harder than overlaying operating again, and enjoying man protection is often harder than matching in a zone.
Here are the highest 32 cornerbacks for the 2024 season heading into Week 6.
