Grading the Roster - Cornerbacks

[pwny]

How good is our group of Cornerbacks right now?

• Shaquill Griffin
• C.J. Henderson
• Sidney Jones
• Tre Herndon
• Josiah Scott
• Brandon Watson
• Chris Claybrooks
• Luq Barcoo
• Nate Meadors

Are there any of these players that should be let go or traded?

 

Of these, who is best suited to play the slot in Nickel packages? If that answer is one of the presumed starters in base, who shifts to the outside?

A question just for the CBs: New regimes often mean that they start looking at talent differently than the previous. One of the more common position changes in the NFL is moving a Corner to Safety. Is there anyone on this roster that you think would benefit from doing so?

Other questions to consider answering:

Who would you make the starter(s)? Who is the best back up? If a starter went out for any real amount of time, would the backup be able to perform well enough to keep the team on track? Do you expect growth, decline, or similar play out of the players at this position?

 

Previous threads in this series:

Quarterbacks
EDGE
Wide Receivers

[JiffyJag]

C+/B- 

This largely hinges on Henderson panning out/staying healthy. Past Herndon I think the other guys are largely expendable, and Herndon isn't so hot either. Hopefully we still add a guy in the draft in round 3ish, think Samuel is probably the best fit for what we still need but I doubt he's there in round 3 and we do have more pressing needs. 

 

[JaguarCrazy2832]

I feel alot better about it now that we have Griffin but the range of outcomes is so wide its tough to pinpoint. This might be the most volatile group we have. The top-3 have the potential to be very dangerous but if Henderson doesnt take the next step and Jones doesnt stay healthy its one of the worst in the NFL

[Uncle Buck]

Going into 2021, I'd give us a B-.  Griffin was a great addition, and I have faith in Henderson.  He was one of the best corners in his draft class.  As he gets more acclimated to the NFL game, our grade will improve.  Other than those two, it wouldn't hurt to find a slot corner and maybe get some additional depth. 

[LinderFournette]

I'll do a b. 

Jones and herndon are slot options.

Brandon rusnak(Watson) was a backup s last year.

Claybrooks can probably also play slot tho he kinda sucked last year. Scott and barcoo couldn't even get off the pine really. 

[Tugboat]

I'd probably peg it somewhere in the C+/B- territory.  A lot of things up in the air though.  New pieces coming in, a sophomore in a key role, and obviously a totally new coaching staff and scheme make things pretty unpredictable.  Never really know how guys will take to that new system, and how they'll all gel as a unit.  It can take some time for guys to really come together.

Seems like they've more or less assembled a group of "passing grade" pieces though, for the most part.  With a little bit of upside to be better than that if a young guy like CJ takes a step.

Need to keep adding young pieces through the draft with some upside.  But with Griffin in the fold now, it feels like they've more or less brought the secondary up to a level that it's not a dire, pressing need trying to desperately patch via the draft.  Which is good, because that pretty much never works, at all.  And it's just a terrible situation to be in, generally, because it tends to screw up everything else in team building once a front office gets to chasing things to patch a hole in the secondary with a rookie like that.

So...decent "passing grade" with a little extra sauce on top maybe.  Enough to not feel like it's going to be an overemphasized/overdrafted premium pick "Need" like this team going into the draft last year.

[Charles]

You guys are a bit more optimistic than me.  I'm going c-.  Need to see Henderson progress, and none of the others outside of Griffin (and let's not pretend that he's a stud...solid yes) give me any confidence.  Wouldn't be bothered if they spent an early pick on a corner.

-charles

[.Buzz]

56 minutes ago, Charles said:

You guys are a bit more optimistic than me.  I'm going c-.  Need to see Henderson progress, and none of the others outside of Griffin (and let's not pretend that he's a stud...solid yes) give me any confidence.  Wouldn't be bothered if they spent an early pick on a corner.

-charles

I mean, if we're giving our QB situation something like a B-/B when Lawrence hasn't even stepped into an NFL locker room...

You have a low end CB1 in Shaq, an unproven but high upside Hendo as CB2, and Sidney Jones who when healthy looked like a quality corner for us last year. Herndon isn't anything to right home about but is quality depth.

Seems like a solid room to me. May not have the true alpha yet, but we have one with that type of potential on the roster. I'd say it's ok to grade while taking into account the upside of the room and being aware there's risk (including Sidney Jones health).

[Tugboat]

1 hour ago, .Buzz said:

I mean, if we're giving our QB situation something like a B-/B when Lawrence hasn't even stepped into an NFL locker room...

You have a low end CB1 in Shaq, an unproven but high upside Hendo as CB2, and Sidney Jones who when healthy looked like a quality corner for us last year. Herndon isn't anything to right home about but is quality depth.

Seems like a solid room to me. May not have the true alpha yet, but we have one with that type of potential on the roster. I'd say it's ok to grade while taking into account the upside of the room and being aware there's risk (including Sidney Jones health).

Yeah.  It's not like it's some great "strength" of the team.  But it has the makings of at least a "decent" CB group.  Really, i think we ought to have grouped the Safeties in with it and just done it as a Secondary group.  But that doesn't really change things much grade-wise.

I think expectations of what a really good CB group looks like, probably got inflated when we had Jalen and Bouye together at their peak.  That kind of thing is exceptionally rare.  Only a few teams in any given year, have a true star CB like that...much less another borderline CB1 opposite them.  More typical, is teams just having a mostly "good enough" group.  More along the lines of what it looks like we may have here now.

Like...that Jalen, Bouye, Colvin group was, on a realistic grading scale...probably an A++ collection of CBs.  Especially with Gipson and Church behind them, playing at the level they were, and Ronnie looking promising at the time as extra depth.  Right now, we're many rungs below that obviously...but a C+/B- is many rungs below that.  As close to "F" grade as it is to an "A++".

Edited March 21, 2021 by Tugboat

[pwny]

On 3/21/2021 at 6:18 PM, Tugboat said:

Like...that Jalen, Bouye, Colvin group was, on a realistic grading scale...probably an A++ collection of CBs.  Especially with Gipson and Church behind them, playing at the level they were, and Ronnie looking promising at the time as extra depth.  Right now, we're many rungs below that obviously...but a C+/B- is many rungs below that.  As close to "F" grade as it is to an "A++".

I think an issue is also that what constitutes the grades is very different for each person. Like if we’re grading on a bell curve, on average only one team in the league would have an A and one an F. 4 each would be B and D grades, while 22 teams would sit at a C. But that also wouldn’t be fun because the answer is just C for everything except the few groups that are a D right now. 

One alternative is that like 6-8 teams sit in each letter grouping. Is this CB unit like a 13-20 unit to be deserving of only a C? Is it maybe even in the back half of that group? Honestly, maybe, depending on how you view Hendo and the players who will be in the slot. 

[Tugboat]

3 hours ago, pwny said:

I think an issue is also that what constitutes the grades is very different for each person. Like if we’re grading on a bell curve, on average only one team in the league would have an A and one an F. 4 each would be B and D grades, while 22 teams would sit at a C. But that also wouldn’t be fun because the answer is just C for everything except the few groups that are a D right now. 

One alternative is that like 6-8 teams sit in each letter grouping. Is this CB unit like a 13-20 unit to be deserving of only a C? Is it maybe even in the back half of that group? Honestly, maybe, depending on how you view Hendo and the players who will be in the slot. 

Yeah, that's true.  It is a bit of an issue, trying to rate the position groups without a particularly rigid rubric or anything.  It's all pretty subjective, and different people are certainly going to rate the same level of "capability" differently.

But ultimately, the actual grade matters less than the discussion/explanation anyway, so nbd.

 

I think i'd put our CB group somewhere in that "middle of the pack" group.  In that 13-20 group is probably fair, if you're reasonably optimistic about Henderson.

The way i see it, Griffin is probably somewhere in that range of middling CB1s around the league.  12-20ish somewhere.  But it is a big "mushy middle" with a bunch of pretty interchangeable "decently capable, but absolutely nothing special" guys, that makes it hard to score a lot of "points" that way, without a real difference-maker.  Henderson is probably more toward the upper-end of CB2s behind that.  But i'm kinda wary about giving him a big boost for having the potential and traits to be a very good CB1, rather than for what he's actually really proven.  We've also only actually seen him behind a completely non-existant pass rush though, which makes it hard, as there's only so much a DB can do in that situation.  They're not going to be flattered.  So i could understand a more generous grade there, on that merit.  But it's projection that's hard to lean on, for me.

Which, makes up the bulk of the grade for me, and the depth is really just a ??? like it is for most teams in any given year.  But lumping it together that way, looking at how they each relate...that 13-20 range feels fair to me.  Which i'd call a C+/B- range.

[pwny]

My grading would probably something like

A+: 1-2
A : 3-4
A-: 5-6
B+: 7-8
B : 9-10
B-: 11-12
C+: 13-15
C : 16-17
C-: 18-20
D+: 21-22
D : 23-24
D-: 25-26
F+: 27-28
F : 29-30
F-: 31-32