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Lockdown or Letdown: Can a First-Round Cornerback Save Colts' Defense in Year One?
Looking back at the rookie seasons of first-round cornerbacks of the past to determine if fans can expect a rookie cornerback to produce at a high level.
With just over two weeks until the 2024 NFL Draft's first round kicks off, a glaring position of need for the Indianapolis Colts remains. The mock drafters have taken notice, often projecting the Colts to select a cornerback with the 15th overall selection. The Colts occupy a position that could see them having their pick of top-rated prospects like Toledo’s Quinyon Mitchell, Alabama’s Terrion Arnold, or Iowa’s Cooper DeJean.
The Colts will enter the 2024 NFL season with the intent to win the AFC South, an achievement the team has not earned since 2014. By making few outside additions through free agency and largely focusing on the return of their own players, the Colts appear to be relying on the draft to introduce outside talent to the roster. Although the positive effects of adding a high draft pick to a position of need should extend beyond one season, we will take a closer look at how much the team can expect a first-round cornerback to contribute in his rookie campaign.
The Current Cornerback Room
Now that the dust of free agency has settled, seven cornerbacks are on the Colts’ roster. Aside from Kenny Moore II, who primarily plays in the slot, it is a vastly inexperienced group. The only player in this group to have amassed at least 500 snaps in their careers is Jaylon Jones, a seventh-round rookie this past season. With the majority of defensive snaps utilizing at least three cornerbacks, the Colts are stretched thin to get enough talent on the field for those snaps.
With Moore a stalwart in the lineup in the slot, that still leaves two cornerback spots on the outside to fill. Presumably, the Colts would like last year’s second-round selection, JuJu Brents, to occupy one of those spots full-time, though injuries limited his rookie season to nine game appearances. Even if the team is comfortable banking on Brents’ health this upcoming season, that still leaves some combination of Jones, Dallis Flowers, Darrell Baker Jr., and Ameer Speed to hold down what will likely amount to around 75% of all defensive snaps at one spot.
There is some promise in the current group and a vocalized belief from Colts general manager Chris Ballard in the continued development of these players.
“I like our three young corners," Ballard told reporters following last season. "JuJu's gotta be healthy, we gotta get Dallis back healthy, we think we will. We think JuJu will be back healthy. We think both of them are very good. I think we underestimate what Jones did. I thought Jones played really good football last year and did it against some very talented wideouts and never once backed down."
But he also noted that there is still work to do in the secondary.
What To Expect?
When drafting in the top half of the first round, a team expects to find a player who can come in and be an impact contributor immediately. At cornerback, specifically, the Colts will be looking for an instant upgrade at one of their outside corner spots that can grow into a future cornerstone of the defense.
There have been 44 cornerbacks selected in the first round of the draft in the past 10 years (2014-23). Using the average performance of these 44 players, a reasonable expectation of what using a first-round draft choice can provide a defense in year one can be established.
Playing Time
The average snap count of first-round rookie cornerbacks in the past 10 years is about 673 snaps. This number accounts for playing time lost to injuries and coaching decisions. The Colts’ defense was on the field for 1,173 snaps in the 2023 season so if they draft a first-round cornerback and he plays the average amount, he would be on the field roughly 57% of the time.
For reference, Moore was on the field for 92.8% of the Colts’ defensive snaps last season. The snap share of the other cornerbacks currently on the roster are:
- Jaylon Jones (67.2%)
- JuJu Brents (42.4%)
- Darrell Baker Jr. (40.0%)
- Dallis Flowers (25.9%)
- Chris Lammons (5.1%)
- Ameer Speed (0.2%)
With the obvious need at the position, the Colts would, of course, be hoping for their first-round selection to end up seeing the higher end of that range. Still, injuries cannot be predicted even if they are willing to give the rookie playing time regardless of performance. Of the 44 first-round rookie corners, 22 of them played more snaps than Jones did for the Colts last season. So essentially, the chance the Colts’ first-round rookie will see more playing time than last year’s seventh-round rookie is roughly 50/50.
Target Percentage
This number represents the percentage of the time the opposing passer targets the player the cornerback is defending. This only accounts for snaps when the defender is in coverage and does not include running plays. This can be a gauge of how often an opposing quarterback is willing to test the defender in coverage. The average first-round cornerback was targeted at a rate of 15.58%.
Some of the more impressive numbers in this range are the 2022 seasons of New York Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner with an 11.37% target percentage and Kansas City Chiefs cornerback Trent McDuffie sitting at 11.91%. Former Buffalo Bills cornerback Tre’Davious White also posted an 11.91% in his rookie season 2017.
Baker and Brents were both targeted at a rate slightly above average last season. Jones, however, was targeted on only 12.00% of his coverage snaps. Flowers was targeted even less, albeit with a smaller sample size of snaps, at 10.23%.
Reception Percentage
Being targeted at a higher rate isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. If a rookie corner is thrust into a large role and assigned to cover the top receivers of each opponent, that could naturally skew the number. Reception percentage indicates the number of targets that led to completions. This number does not consider the depth of these targets. A first-round rookie cornerback allows an average of 60.63% of their targets to be completed.
Jones (54.4%) and Baker (58.0%) both allowed a reception percentage lower than this average. Flowers allowed just above the average while Brents allowed the highest reception percentage of the group at 66.7%.
Yards per Coverage Snap
The number of yards allowed per snap in coverage is a general metric that helps quantify an offense’s success in throwing the football in a certain defender’s direction. The average first-round cornerback has given up 1.21 yards per coverage snap during their rookie season.
The usual suspects when thinking of impressive rookie cornerbacks tend to show up on the low end of this metric. In 2022, Gardner allowed 0.56 yards per coverage snap with fellow rookie classmate McDuffie following closely at 0.75.
Two Colts corners ended up posting a number well below the first-round rookie average of 1.21 this past season and both will likely be competing for a starting role on the perimeter of the defense this coming year. Flowers allowed 0.65 yards per coverage snap and Jones allowed 0.69. In comparison, Brents and Baker both ended up right around 1.50.
Yards After Catch per Reception
The Colts place a high value on cornerbacks who can tackle well, a trait that pushed past picks like Rock Ya-Sin up their board. Yards after catch per reception expresses how quickly the defender can bring a receiver to the ground after a pass is completed. Three Colts cornerbacks performed better than the typical first-round rookie, which allows 4.11 yards after the catch on average.
Baker is an outlier in this group, allowing an average of 4.90 yards after the catch. The other three in the cornerback group performed as follows:
- Jaylon Jones (1.84)
- Dallis Flowers (2.64)
- JuJu Brents (2.78)
Jones’ number here is particularly impressive. His 1.84 average yards after catch allowed is a lower mark than all but one first-round rookie cornerback with more than 100 coverage snaps in the past ten years. Jason Verrett is the only one to have posted a more impressive number, 1.71 in 2014.
Touchdowns Allowed and Interceptions
The more traditional statistics are where the weaknesses of the Colts’ cornerbacks last season reveal themselves. The group of Brents, Jones, Flowers, and Baker combined to play 1,252 coverage snaps. In those snaps, they allowed twelve touchdowns and generated only one interception.
Knowing the rates at which the average first-round rookie cornerback allows touchdowns and generates interceptions, in those same 1,252 snaps, a team could expect that rookie to allow roughly three fewer touchdowns and intercept about three and a half more passes on average.
Creating turnovers and limiting explosive plays are two linchpins of Gus Bradley’s defensive philosophy and the Colts’ outside cornerbacks were substandard in both aspects last season.
The Final Verdict
After impressive performances last season, largely from Jones and Flowers, inserting a first-round pick into the lineup ahead of these two may not create as major of a difference as fans would expect in year one.
Interceptions and touchdowns tend to be volatile statistics so the hope would be that those numbers end up looking more favorable and not prove to be an unfortunate trend. Jones will be 22 years old at the start of next season, younger than Toledo’s Mitchell, so he could end up becoming a fixture in this defense for a long time to come. If Jones can sustain his performance next season while allowing two or three fewer touchdowns and getting his hands on one or two interceptions, that would end up being a season that would rival anything you could expect from a rookie cornerback, even a first-rounder.
That is a big “if,” though. Positive development is not a given despite a promising rookie season. This, combined with the uncertainty that comes with Flowers returning from an Achilles injury that ended his run last season means that the Colts cannot afford to ignore the cornerback position in the upcoming draft. They may feel like the potential of their young corners allows them to focus on needs elsewhere on the roster in round one, but a playable addition must be made to the room to introduce competition and security if nothing else.
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