Coverage vs Pass Rush: Case for CB at Pick 14
Tanishka Mhaskar
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The Minnesota Vikings have a variety of options when it comes to the 14th overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft. This will certainly be predicated by what they choose to do in free agency, but today I’ll make my case for drafting a corner.
I know. You’re thinking, “another corner?!” The Vikings drafted two corners within the top 100 picks last year that were both super promising, in Jeff Gladney and Cameron Dantzler, who made PFWRA’s All-Rookie team. The Vikings even get Mike Hughes and Kris Boyd back from injury. They need defensive line help too. So, why draft a corner?
It follows the idea that teams with elite coverage (67th percentile or better) and a poor pass rush (33rd percentile or worse) win, on average, about a game and a half more than teams with the reverse construction. This is because pass blocking is much more consistent from week-to-week than pass rushing. Pass rushing success has a lot to do with who you’re playing against and pass blocking has more to do with how good you are yourself.
It’s easier for the modern, short passing games to scheme around great pass rushers than it is to scheme around great coverage. There is also more flexibility in the way you can rush the passer if you trust your coverage unit, whereas things are a little more black and white if you have a great pass rush and so-so secondary; you’re just hoping on a given snap that you get to the QB because odds are, if they don’t, there is gonna be a man open before long.
In a study conducted by PFF, it was discovered that:
“At the player level, pass rushers with more than 400 snaps in consecutive seasons have pass-rush grades that correlate at a rate of roughly 0.62 (r-squared 0.38) for both per-snap and the aggregate level. On the other hand, coverage players with 400 snaps in consecutive seasons have coverage grades that correlate at a rate of roughly 0.34 (0.12) for both per-snap and the aggregate level.”
Eric Eager and George Chahrouri
A single elite pass rusher around other below average rushers will have a bigger, positive impact than a single elite DB will have amongst a group of below-average players in the secondary, so the individual pass rusher is probably more valuable than the individual DB, but in regards to a whole unit, the secondary is more impactful.
It correlates in a similar way with wins.
This model fits the Vikings because they already have a single elite pass rusher in Danielle Hunter. Around him, they have a few rotational level players like DJ Wonnum, Hercules Mata’afa, and Ifeadi Odenigbo. Additionally, Minnesota hasn’t taken a first-round EDGE since 2004 when they took Kenechi Udeze out of USC.
The Vikings should stock up on cheap, rotational pass rushers in free agency and in the mid-rounds of the draft instead of through the underwhelming first-round EDGE class.
It may be more worthwhile to spend picks on shoring up their decent secondary with one more outside corner and a starting safety to replace Anthony Harris than it would be to revamp the DL in hopes of making it elite.
Options at the fourteenth pick in the draft, depending on how the board falls, likely include corners like Patrick Surtain, Caleb Farley, and Jaycee Horn, all of whom would fit nicely into the Vikings scheme and give them their second outside CB alongside Dantzler.
If there’s one thing we learned from the 2020 Vikings, it’s that you can’t have too many corners.