Pro Football Focus released a list of their top-50 players in the NFL heading into the 2020 season. The Buffalo Bills do not appear on this list.
Instead, one Bills player, Tre’Davious White, appears on another list.
That list pegs 10 players who “just missed” the top-50 and White is among them. In PFF’s explanation as to why White’s just outside of their listing there’s a surprising notion of White’s recent seasons. The football analytics outlet says the now All-Pro defender hasn’t met the expectations he set for himself as a rookie.
The breakdown is here:
You had to know this one was coming, right? Tre’ Davious White is an extremely talented cornerback, one PFF has graded extremely highly in the past, but our grading allows us to add layers of context that simply aren’t captured elsewhere. But even if we were to use only his coverage stats, White was far from elite last season. He was 31st in terms of coverage snap per reception and 18th in terms of yards surrendered per coverage snap, and before people start screaming about how much zone coverage he played, the players who led the NFL in each category played in zone-heavy schemes, as well. For a while now, White just hasn’t matched the high standards he set for himself in 2017.
We’ve already partially referenced what’s curious about such a statement. Did White have a promising rookie season? Yes. His standards were set so high that 2018 seemed like a bad season, but really it wasn’t really below average much.
But in 2019, it was a huge bounce-back and yes, he was named as All-Pro. But evidently to the analytics outlet, White hasn’t matched his output as a rookie. Even if White isn’t in the top-50, saying he hasn’t met high standards just seems false.
It terms of cornerbacks who did make the top-50 list, it’s some stiff competition. Those named were the Patriots’ Stephon Gilmore, the 49ers’ Richard Sherman and the Chargers’ Casey Hayward. All very good cornerbacks and White certainly is not far off from their talents.
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