The great Jerry Seinfeld once said, “I don’t know why you would wanna play man-to-man when you can play a zone,” which the Vikings took very literally in 2022, playing the fifth most zone coverage in the NFL. There is truth to the comedian’s statement but only if you don’t have strength at the cornerback position, like the Vikings. The secondary (especially CBs) was their biggest problem on defense in 2022, and it’s arguably their biggest need going into free agency and the draft. However, given the nature of the unpredictable success in the position, it may not be as easy as it looks to draft the next Sauce Gardner or have a trade work out as well as it did for the Rams with Jalen Ramsey.
So let’s see if any of the top free agent corners would fit the Brian Flores scheme, and see if it’s worthwhile to take a chance on one of them.
Flores’ defensive coverage scheme
Unlike Jerry Seinfeld, Brian Flores is a huge fan of running man coverage. Most teams will run zone coverage more than (and nearly double) the amount of man coverage, but Flores did the opposite.
A key part of running man coverage is strength in the secondary to win the one-on-one matchups, which is what the Dolphins had with Xavien Howard and Byron Jones (and what the Vikings didn’t have in 2022). The Dolphins were even successful at holding the offense to negative EPA on just over 60% of all plays in man coverage.
Ed Donatell called over four times as much zone coverage than man coverage last season, and rightfully so given Patrick Peterson was carrying the cornerback room (more on that later). He didn’t seem to trust the other corners to win the man-to-man matchups, but when they did run man coverage, they were pretty successful at keeping the amount of explosive plays to a minimum – look for Brian Flores to use that as a promising starting point.
Free agent corners
With Patrick Peterson currently a free agent, the Vikings are now left with a cornerback group that’s pretty much ready to declare bankruptcy, so many changes need to occur starting with free agency. With some respectable quality cornerbacks hitting the open market soon, there is a good case for the Vikings taking a shot on at least one of them. And even though the upcoming cornerback draft class is strong and reportedly very deep (and the Vikings should strongly consider using an early round pick on one of them), I don’t know if the Vikings want to take Michael Scott’s “blessed be those who sit and wait” principle and let all these corners go other places in free agency.
Here are most of the top names set to be up for grabs, along with their 2022 stats.
It appears the free agent corners that are best fit to transition well to the Flores scheme would be James Bradberry and Cameron Sutton. Bradberry tops the list in most of these stats – allowing the lowest completion percentage and having the highest number of passes defended – and he’s got a decent amount of experience running man coverage.
Sutton is the player whose numbers suggest the Vikings should make the strongest push for since he’s got the most experience with man coverage and has the connection to Flores from their time together on the Steelers. He doesn’t have a bad stat on this table, and he’d fit in instantly on the Vikings.
Patrick Peterson meant a lot to the Vikings last season, accumulating a WAR (wins above replacement) of 0.51 in 2022, the highest on this list. That’s in part because his play shined around the otherwise weak cornerback room, but he did have the eighth highest PFF coverage grade in the NFL in 2022. But he is harder to project due to his age (like Marcus Peters) and played primarily zone last year, so it may not be in the Vikings’ best interest to bring him back.
Emmanuel Moseley is the biggest question mark on this list, but he does have a lot of upside after being stellar in coverage in the 5 games he played before his ACL injury. While bringing someone in to revamp a cornerback room after a major injury like that is not the most ideal scenario, it might be something they consider with limited resources.
Free agent cornerback busts
Cornerback is one of the hardest positions to predict in the NFL, and sometimes free agent signings don’t go exactly as planned. Sometimes they joined an entirely new scheme than they’re used to, sometimes their play was already on the decline, and sometimes teams were fooled by one great year. By looking at PFF coverage grades, you can probably call these 6 cornerbacks “busts” for the team that signed them.
The cornerback with the most obvious rationale for busting on his new team was William Jackson. While on the Bengals in 2020, Jackson had a great year playing zone coverage, but when he signed with the Commanders (a heavy man coverage defense) in 2021, his level of play dramatically decreased, as shown by his PFF coverage grade in both one year and two years after signing with the Commanders.
The Jets were fooled by Morris Claiborne’s one stellar year, and the Jaguars thought they could get Darious Williams back to his level of play that he had in the Super Bowl, even though his next year wasn’t great.
Chris Culliver and JC Jackson both had drastic falls from the sky after having two great years of play before signing with a new team. They’re great examples of the uncertainty at the position even though there wasn’t much of a scheme change they went through.
What should the Vikings do?
The Vikings have some big decisions on their hands if they want to revamp their cornerback room, and that all starts with getting something done in free agency. Sutton has had coverage grades above 70 in 3 out of his last 4 years, Bradberry’s been close to or over 80 in 2 of his last 3 seasons, and Jamel Dean has been over 75 ever since he entered the league in 2019. Not many of these top free agent corners look to be on the decline, so it’s 100% worthwhile to go out and get one.
We’ll bring in another Michael quote from The Office – “If you do your spring cleaning in January, guess what you don’t have to do in the spring? Anything” – spring cleaning being signing some cornerbacks – not that the Vikings should only address this in free agency, it would also make their lives a lot easier come draft time. So, go and get one of the quality corners out there who will pair well with Flores and jumpstart this secondary, and then see what else you can get in the draft in a deep and strong cornerback class.
