In this week’s edition of “The Xs and Os,” Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar define the traits needed to be a top-tier NFL outside cornerback.
If you were to create the ideal secondary for the modern NFL, most likely that secondary would have at least five pass defenders in its base coverages. Adding that slot defender, whether it’s a cornerback or a safety in “big nickel” (three-safety) packages, is a must against today’s 3×1 receiver sets. You’d also want outside cornerbacks who can play press-man coverage against an opponent’s top receivers, and safeties who don’t live by the old free and strong designations.
In this week’s edition of “The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” Greg (of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup) and Doug (of Touchdown Wire) endeavor to build the perfect modern secondary, starting with the ideal traits for every position.
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Building the perfect cornerback for 2023 and beyond requires that this hypothetical cornerback play man coverage right out of the box. As we discussed on the show last week, there’s one reason for this: The increasing use of quick game by NFL offenses.
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“You would start with the idea that he has to play man coverage,” Greg said. “If he cannot play man coverage, he cannot play cornerback at a high level in the National Football League. Now, there are multiple ways to play man coverage. It doesn’t always have to be press; you can play off-man, as well. The increasing use of quick game, and the increasing use of the RPO, which is basically another form of quick game with an added element to it… the need to play press has increased in the league. With quick game, the ball comes out of the quarterback’s hand in anywhere from 1.5 to 1.7 seconds from the time of the snap, and the pass rush isn’t going to get there. So, you’re not going to affect the quarterback — you need to impact the receivers.”
Which is one reason offenses are using so much pre-snap motion these days — to take aggressive press coverage out of the equation. But this isn’t the only thing the modern cornerback must do at a consistently high rate.
“One of the things you see a lot of in the NFL is 3×1 sets,” Greg continued. “Meaning that there’s three receivers to one side, and a single receiver to the short side of the field. More often than not, that receiver is a wide receiver — what we call the ‘Boundary X.’ You need a cornerback who can match up to the Boundary X receiver, man-to-man with theoretically no help. It doesn’t happen like that 100% of the time — nothing does — but there will be situations in which that cornerback will be playing man coverage with no help. Basically, it’s Cover-0.”
One of the reasons that Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner of the Jets won the Defensive Rookie of the Year award was his ability to click and close on iso receivers with three receivers to the other side without any safety help. This deflection of a Josh Allen deep pass to receiver John Brown in Week 14. Gardner is one of the few NFL cornerbacks with just about every attribute you want at the position.
Gardner ranked second in our list of the NFL’s 11 best cornerbacks, and if he’s No. 1 in 2024, few people should be surprised.
The NFL’s 11 best cornerbacks
You can watch the full episode of this week’s “Xs and Os” right here:
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You can also listen to the Xs and Os podcast on Spotify:
…or on Apple podcasts.
