During the offseason leading up to the 2022 season, the ridiculous notion that Cowboys cornerback Trevon Diggs was overrated had to be addressed. After snagging 11 interceptions in 16 games for Dallas, the most since Everson Walls took down that total back in 1981, Diggs was being dinged for the amount of yardage he allowed. Pro Football Focus, which has plenty of merit in other circumstances, claimed Diggs had allowed over 1,000 yards in coverage during the year.
Diggs, who certainly gave up his share of big plays, was saddled with the reputation of being boom or bust, without context applied. First, other outlets didn’t assign nearly as much yardage blame to Diggs as PFF did. Second, just like garbage-time stats for QBs can mislead, the same goes for the corners they are throwing on. Third, there had to be a better way to quantify CB performance than what was out there. That led to the development of Adjust Net Yards Allowed per Coverage Snap.
Adjust Net Yards per Attempt, or ANY/A, is an advanced metric formula that translates touchdowns and interceptions thrown into yardage equivalents and has a ridiculously good correlation to victory. What we did was translate the formula to coverage to better qualify how corners were playing on a per-coverage-snap basis.