The era of the shutdown corner is over. Actually, I'm not sure there ever was such an era. The notion of "Revis Island" -- so named because Darrelle Revis sometimes shadowed an opponent's best receiver -- swept the football world a few years ago, which led to many simplistic formulations. You know: "Oh, no, you can't use Reggie Wayne! He's facing Aqib Talib this week!" My Twitter feed is still occasionally littered by questions like, how can I rank Michael Crabtree so high, don't I know that Patrick Peterson is on the Arizona Cardinals?
But that idea was always specious. The truth is that it's rare an NFL defense formulates a game plan that calls for one cornerback to shadow one wideout everywhere on the field. It happens, but more often than not, defenses come into a game expecting their corners to "play sides," and then adjust as the game proceeds. This is true even of most of the league's very best corners this season, through three games:
Where notable CBs have lined up
Snap counts, 2014 season
Of this elite group, Haden is most likely to be employed in "island" fashion. In Week 1, for instance, he tracked Antonio Brown all over the field for much of the game, but in Weeks 2 and 3 he mixed it up a lot, "playing sides" much of the time, then occasionally shuttling toward Jimmy Graham and Steve Smith as those contests progressed. Revis appeared to be tracking Greg Jennings for much of Week 2, but played the defensive left side for most of Weeks 1 and 3. Peterson, Sherman and Talib, meanwhile, simply are not employed as shadow corners. So proclaiming your WR has a tough matchup because "he has to play against Richard Sherman" is a faulty argument.
My observation is that Jimmy Smith, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and Jason McCourty have also done some shadowing this season, but not every week, and often not until a tough receiving weapon proves he needs extra attention. And that's to say nothing of how often NFL corners are in straight-up zone, trading off receivers depending on route combinations. All of this is to say, the next time your buddy tells you his receiver has an impossible matchup because the other team has a good corner, you'll know better.
Yet the quality of an opposing secondary is important. In particular, I'm speaking about a defense's top three corners. Nickel formations that include slot corners are becoming almost a default formation in many circumstances on many teams, and if a squad doesn't go fairly deep in the "coverage" arena, they can be exploited. So I thought it would be useful to discuss the best and worst coverage units I've observed through three games, with an eye toward potentially playing matchups as the season progresses. I recognize that this is a very small sample size, and I also recognize that no secondary is "good" or "bad" in a vacuum; upfront pressure -- or a lack thereof -- conceals or creates many back-end sins. Still, I hope we find this is a useful exercise.
Three up
1. Denver Broncos (Aqib Talib, Bradley Roby, Chris Harris): The Broncos gave $26 million guaranteed to Talib this winter, and while I'm unsure he can stay healthy, he has been awfully good so far. His size and ability to undercut throws has been on major display: His tip of a Russell Wilson pass in Week 3 led to a Harris interception that helped change the game. For his part, last season Harris was the best slot corner in the NFL, but he's mostly had to move outside in 2014 despite coming off a torn ACL. And he's been quite good (plus he has a great name). Roby played the slot in Weeks 1 and 2, then acquitted himself well in Week 3, when Harris shifted inside to deal with Percy Harvin. That's my favorite future formation for this group:
The Seattle Seahawks are two-wide and send Luke Willson in motion from the top; Roby follows him across the formation. Doug Baldwin clears out Talib down the right side, and Russell Wilson play-actions to Marshawn Lynch and throws a screen to Harvin. Wilson is supposed to block Harris, but Harris is a slippery target: He avoids the block, gets into the backfield, and tackles Harvin for a 1-yard loss.
If Roby progresses to the point where he can stay outside without getting picked on too badly (ProFootballFocus reports that he has been thrown at 20 times, for 16 completions), Harris will bump inside where he's just terrific, and the Broncos will be one mean team to throw against.
2. Cincinnati Bengals (Leon Hall, Terence Newman, Adam Jones): Hall has torn both his Achilles tendons in the past two years, Newman is 36, and Pacman is . . . mercurial. Yet when they're all playing together, they're a tough group. Newman exclusively mans the defensive left side, and through three games, is usually the player at whom opposing QBs have looked first, but he has acquitted himself well, and should've had a hand-delivered Jake Locker pick-six in Week 3. Hall saw a fair amount of Julio Jones in Week 2 and limited him to zero yards on two targets (Julio scored his TD against Pacman while trailing 24-3) and made a crazy-athletic interception on a deflected pass. Adam Jones is mostly a slot player and if there's a weak link, it's him. But considering the Bengals haven't mustered a big pass rush yet, I'm impressed how well they've held up, especially against Matt Ryan.
3. Atlanta Falcons (Desmond Trufant, Robert Alford, Robert McClain): Speaking of teams that don't get much of a pass rush: The Falcons have registered three sacks and have generated pressure on just 19.4 percent of opposing dropbacks, a bottom-five rate in the NFL. Combine that with a so-so run defense, and there's a lot of stress on the corners. But the Trufant/Alford combo is good. They absolutely "play sides": Trufant has 184 snaps on the left and zero on the right; Alford has 190 snaps on the right and zero on the left. But it works, and McClain is a spark plug sprinting around the middle. When the Falcons made their NFC championship run a couple of years ago, they were undone by fading players like Dunta Robinson and Asante Samuel. That is no longer the case.
Three down
1. Jacksonville Jaguars (Dwayne Gratz, Alan Ball, Will Blackmon): I feel less confident trashing cornerbacks after three games than I do praising them. I can usually tell good coverage when I see it -- "Hey! That guy really stuck close to that other guy!" -- but it's harder to know why a defender wasn't able to make a play. Was it even his assignment? Did the pass rush take way too long? That said, the Jags have stuck out as particularly hapless. Week 2 against Washington was galling:
I mean, guys, I know we're in zone here, but that doesn't mean every single Washington receiver has to be open. Ball was a pretty good player in 2013 after bearing blame for some lean defensive years with the Dallas Cowboys, but he hasn't played well this season, with blown coverages and missed tackles galore. Gratz got eaten up by the Indianapolis Colts last week (especially having to cover tight ends split wide), and Blackmon has been too yielding in the slot. I hesitate to draw season-long conclusions about which defenses are prime-time matchups for your opposing WRs this early, but the Jags will have to turn things around not to own that dishonor throughout '14.
2. New Orleans Saints (Keenan Lewis, Corey White, Patrick Robinson): Actually this is a bit of a cheat, as in Week 3 Robinson fell all the way down to dime duties, losing time to Rafael Bush. Champ Bailey couldn't make the team, and '14 second-round corner Stanley Jean-Baptiste has been a healthy scratch three weeks running, so the point holds: The Saints have very little coverage depth now that Robinson has been exposed. The numbers look good from last week's win against the Minnesota Vikings, with only 188 yards passing allowed. But things get more real this week against the Cowboys. Defenses aren't shying away from Lewis: He's been targeted as much as White, and he participated in one of the biggest botches of the season thus far, the wide-open throw to Andrew Hawkins that allowed the Cleveland Browns to shock the Saints. (To be fair, while it looked like Lewis was the one who made the error, it's impossible to know for sure.) Anyway, watch out for some points in Big D Sunday.
3. Philadelphia Eagles (Bradley Fletcher, Cary Williams, Brandon Boykin): Boykin gets a pass from me. He might be small (5-foot-10, 185 pounds), but he's a dynamo guarding receivers out of the slot. And in last week's come-from-behind win over Washington, Boykin made a game-saving play, slapping down a pass intended for Andre Roberts on a key third down. But he also barely plays! Through three weeks, Boykin has played 69 of a possible 219 snaps, while outside corners Fletcher and Williams have played 206 and 219, respectively. Williams may have made noise with some silly postgame comments last week about coach Chip Kelly's practices, but his on-field performance spoke volumes: Washington ate him alive. And who gave up Allen Hurns' first TD Week 1? Williams. Meanwhile, Fletcher is what he is: a league-average corner masquerading as a No. 1. Kelly's offensive innovations aren't the only reason Eagles games are shootouts.