The NFL’s best cornerbacks in zone coverage

Who are the NFL’s best zone coverage cornerbacks? When you match stats to tape, here are the 11 top players with that designation.

In the 2019 NFL season, defenses dealt with a total of 17,854 passing attempts. Of those passing attempts, per Sports Info Solutions, 10,025 passing attempts came against some form of zone coverage — Cover-2, Cover-3, Cover-4, Cover-6, combo coverage, or Tampa-2. That 56.1% rate is fairly representative of the NFL over the last few years, but there are wild deviations in the amount of zone coverage teams will play. The Chargers led the league in zone coverage rate at 75%, while the Patriots had the lowest rate at 37%.

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When you have one team playing twice as much zone coverage as another in the same league at the same time, it’s a fascinating construct. And within that construct, here are the cornerbacks who played zone coverages at the very highest levels in the 2019 season.

(All metrics courtesy of Sports Info Solutions unless otherwise specified).