Breaking Down the Cornerback Position: A Statistical Deep Dive (Thru Week 15)
Which Cornerbacks are the best of the best so far this year? Which teams have the best overall CB units? I decided to find out. Using a weighted formula across six defensive categories (tackles, tackles for loss, sacks, interceptions, deflections, and catches allowed), every cornerback in the league who logged a snap got graded on the same scale. All stats and rankings below reflect the season through Week 15 — this isn't a final-season picture, so a few late risers or fallers could still shuffle these results in the closing weeks.
The Formula (One Guy's Opinion, Weighted His Way)
Stat Weight
Tackles (TKL) 0.5
Tackles for Loss (TFL) 1.5
Sacks (SCK) 1.5
Interceptions (INT) 6.0
Deflections (DFL) 3.0
Catches Allowed (CTHA) -1.5
A quick caveat before diving in: this formula is my homemade metric, and there are a million ways to do it. There's no single right way to weigh a cornerback's stat line — you could build a version that values tackling more, punishes catches allowed harder, ignores sacks entirely, or does something totally different. This is simply the formula that I created: interceptions are king, deflections are a strong secondary reward, and catches allowed is the only stat that costs you points, with tackling counting for a little. Treat the rankings below as one lens on the season, not gospel.
The Top of the League
Six corners cleared 100 points in my formual, and they earned it through takeaways, not just tackle totals.
Rank Player Team TKL TFL SCK INT DFL CTHA Score
1 Quentin Jammer SD 57 4 0 7 33 31 129.0
2 Andre Woolfolk NE 73 4 0 8 32 39 128.0
3 Ken Hamlin DEN 61 3 0 7 30 26 128.0
4 Sean Taylor DET 71 2 0 5 31 29 118.0
5 Ken Lucas SEA 43 8 1 7 23 21 114.5
6 Patrick Surtain MIN 56 3 0 8 25 28 113.5
Thru 15 weeks, Andre Woolfolk was leading the league in interceptions with 8, but Quentin Jammer's cleaner overall profile (fewer catches allowed relative to his deflection total) edged him out for the top spot by a single point. Ken Lucas is the outlier of the group — he's the only top-six corner who racked up real havoc numbers up front (8 TFL, a sack) on top of 7 picks, suggesting a corner who's also creating havoc in both the secondary and the backfield.
Interceptions Are the Sexy Stat — But They Don't Tell the Whole Story
INTs are the flashiest stat on the sheet. This analysis lets us test that instinct directly: the RNK column in the original chart ranks every corner purely by interception total, independent of everything else. Comparing that INT-only rank against each player's overall weighted-score rank tells us exactly which corners are getting under- or over-credited by the pick-obsessed eye test.
The Quietly Stellar: Great Seasons, Almost No Picks
These corners barely register on a leaderboard sorted by interceptions alone, but they're comfortably top-half — several top-25 — once you account for the whole picture: deflections, tackling, and just not getting beaten very often.
Player Team INT INT Rank Overall Rank Score
Rashad Washington OAK 0 164th (tied-last) 23rd 69.5
Julian Battle IND 1 74th 35th 58.5
Brandon Browner CIN 1 65th 45th 45.5
Mike Rumph SF 1 84th 46th 45.0
Deltha O'Neal PHI 1 89th 47th 45.0
DeAngelo Hall CIN 0 139th 54th 41.0
Rashad Washington is the fun fact of the season. He's yet to notch an interception and yet he's the 23rd-best corner by total score, with 23 deflections to a quietly excellent year in Oakland's secondary. If your only measure of a corner is "how many picks did he have," Washington doesn't exist on your radar. By total production, he's a a quiet producer at the position.
The Inverse: Picks That Flatter a Rougher Season
On the flip side, a handful of corners parked themselves near the top of the pure-INT leaderboard but have middling-to-poor overall grades once catches allowed and low deflection totals are factored in.
Player Team INT INT Rank Overall Rank Score
David Barrett NYG 4 24th 79th 26.5
Marcus Trufant IND 4 26th 60th 35.5
Shawntae Spencer CLE 4 18th 58th 38.0
Reynaldo Hill SF 3 41st 56th 39.0
Derek Ross NYJ 4 25th 53rd 41.5
David Barrett is the headline case. He's tied for the 24th-most interceptions in the league — a genuinely strong pick total — but his overall grade lands him 79th out of 166. Why? Just 5 deflections against 19 catches allowed on the year; when he wasn't picking the ball off, he was getting beaten far more often than he was breaking anything up. If you judged Barrett's season by "how many picks did he have," you'd think he had a very good year. Judged on the totality of his coverage snaps, it was closer to replacement level.
The pattern holds across the list: a big interception number is real and valuable — it's weighted 6.0 in the formula for a reason — but it's a small-sample stat by nature (most corners have somewhere between 0 and 4 on the year), and it can mask a rough overall season just as easily as a strong one can hide behind a quiet pick total. Deflections and catch rate allowed end up being the more stable signal of who's actually locking down their assignment week to week.
Team CB Unit Rankings
This exercise started as a ranking of individual players, but then I realized the data can be used to compare CB units by team. The rankings below offer one measure of which teams have the best CB units…and which don’t.
Below are the Top 10 by total combined score:
Rank Team Total Score Avg Score Best CB (Score) Team CB INTs
1 NE 270.0 67.5 Andre Woolfolk (128.0) 13
2 DEN 221.5 73.8 Ken Hamlin (128.0) 10
3 ATL 216.5 54.1 Karl Paymah (82.5) 12
4 SEA 215.0 53.8 Ken Lucas (114.5) 10
5 BAL 204.5 51.1 Chris McAlister (94.5) 11
6 BUF 201.0 50.2 Nate Clements (85.0) 11
7 TEN 199.5 49.9 Samari Rolle (104.0) 12
8 DET 197.5 39.5 Sean Taylor (118.0) 11
9 MIN 188.5 47.1 Patrick Surtain (113.5) 11
10 PIT 187.5 46.9 Jerry Azumah (78.5) 7
The bottom 5 CB units are below:
Rank Team Total Score Avg Score Best CB (Score) Team INTs
28 CHI 122.0 30.5 Asante Samuel (75.5) 5
29 OAK 113.0 22.6 Rashad Washington (69.5) 0
30 IND 109.5 27.4 Julian Battle (58.5) 7
31 HOU 103.5 25.9 Dre' Bly (32.5) 4
32 NO 92.0 18.4 Johnathan Joseph (60.5) 4
New England is the deepest and best CB room in the league by a wide margin, anchored by Andre Woolfolk (2nd overall) and Charles Woodson (9th overall) both playing significant snaps — that's two top-10 corners on the same roster, which no other team can claim. Denver's trio is the most efficient on a per-player basis (73.8 average), built around Ken Hamlin's league-best-tied 128.0 season.
At the other end, New Orleans finishes dead last, without a single corner cracking the league's top 60 in overall score and just 4 total team interceptions across the whole unit — the lowest of any team. Oakland is a notable oddity: zero interceptions from the entire cornerback corps (the only team in the league with a goose egg there), yet they're not quite last overall thanks to Rashad Washington's deflection-and-tackle-driven season.
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