Antoine Winfield The Best Cornerback in the league?

Pro Football Focus is one of the sites that adhere to the “sabermetrics of football”. There is a new found focus on statistics in football and measuring as much as possible much like there is in baseball and at the forefront of this phenomenon are sites like profootball focus. Pro Football Focus grades every snap from every player based on a plus minus system. Plus for a positive play that is better than average, and a negative for each play that a player does something much worse than average. This is a cumulative grading system. While the system is not perfect…it’s clearly weighted by players who have more snaps and opportunities…and the fact that without knowing what play was called it’s difficult to know who did or didn’t do their assignments right….the task is daunting and the work should be appreciated and considered for discussion.

Pro Football Focus has been doing a lot of season recap articles lately and one of the most interesting is one about Antoine Winfield.

The article argues that, at least for 2010, Antoine Winfield was the most complete cornerback in the league.

Some excerpts from the article.

Let me start by telling you that Winfield finished the season as PFF’s top graded cornerback. As you know, that’s a composite grade, and it includes coverage, play against the run, penalties and even blitzing. Winfield was one of only a few players to grade positively across the board, in all areas of play.

(…) what makes Winfield special is his ability to be a force in multiple areas of the game, something very rare today.

He was also one of only two cornerbacks last season to play more than 1,000 snaps without being penalized. Charles Woodson led the league in that regard, being flagged 12 times despite being thrown at just 78 times
(…)
To back up the kind of steady play his lack of penalties suggests, the longest reception Winfield was beaten for last season was just 27 yards. He also didn’t allow a touchdown reception all season, and while this next number is skewed slightly by the time he spends in the slot (slot corners allow a noticeably lower YPC figure than corners playing the edge), he allowed just 7.8 yards per reception last season. Only Asante Samuel, who allowed a ridiculous 7.4 yards per reception, bettered that mark.
The point, though, is that Winfield’s season was a demonstration of impressive and consistent play in every area. He may not have been the ‘shut-down’ corner that everybody loves to look for, but when you add up all the areas of his game – each one played at a very high level – he just may have been the best and most complete corner in football in 2010.
What do we think gang, is Antoine Winfield the most complete cornerback in the league, is this way off?

I tend to think that Winfield is vastly under appreciated and I’m closer to Pro Football Focus on this than most people. Loyal football followers know that Winfield is excellent in run support, but that’s such an under appreciated aspect of cornerback play. Now, of course you’d love to see Winfield have more interceptions, he’s never had more than four in any one season, but he does make plays in all other areas, he has five sacks for the Vikings over the past three seasons which is a lot for a cornerback not playing in a “Ryan” defense.

All in all, I’m not sure he’s the most complete cornerback, but I am sure he’s one of the most underappreciated cornerbacks.

Another quick article to read if you have the time is the Running back Elusive Rating.

Some surprising names in each category like:

Most Elusive:

Fred Jackson

Rudi Johnson

Michael Turner

And Least Elusive Suprises:

Darren McFadden

Matt Forte

Brian Westbrook

(the Rankings are from 2008)

And then 2008 through 2010 Suprises

Least Elusive:

Reggie Bush

Matt Forte

Ladanian Tomlinson

Brian Westbrook

And 15 most Elusive from 2008 to 2010

Fred Jackson

Michael Turner

Mwelde Moore? (Yup).

Check it out it’s worth the read.

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