Green Bay Packers' News - 2024

[Yoop]

So what have we learned about Valentine this month? To answer this, I point you to one of the most stable defensive back metrics we have: Yards allowed per coverage snap played.

Over 99 coverage snaps at the outside cornerback position, as defined by NFL Pro’s player tracking data, Valentine has allowed just 43 yards as the nearest defender to the ball (Pro Football Reference has him giving up 37 yards this year if you want a second source). That’s good for 0.43 yards allowed per coverage snap. How does that rank? Well, among the 87 cornerbacks this season who have played as many snaps as Valentine, the league-wide average is 1.07 yards per play. Out of those 87 cornerbacks, only one has allowed fewer yards per coverage snap than Valentine.

Yes, this means that Valentine is edging out star players like Pat Surtain II, Devon Witherspoon, Marshon Lattimore and Jalen Ramsey, who all also rank in the top 10 in the stat among players with as many snaps as Valentine in 2024. That’s...pretty good and shouldn’t be ignored.

How do the rest of the Packers’ cornerback options fair? Keisean Nixon ranks 49th out of 87 with 1.07 yards allowed per coverage snap and Eric Stokes ranks 65th out of 87 with 1.35. Neither are as bad as the Dallas Cowboys’ Caelen Carson, who has allowed 343 yards (and two touchdowns) on 120 coverage snaps (2.86 yards per coverage snap), but Nixon and Stokes have both been playing below-average football this year.

To put it simply: The data says Nixon is a below-average cornerback but an above-average nickel player. The data says Stokes is a bad cornerback. The data says Valentine looks like a good cornerback.

From acme.

just listened to Andy Herman, blogger supreme, and he says Guty took a risk by relying on health of often injured Alexander, a reemergence of rookie play from Stokes, more improvement from basically backup play from Valentine, and Andy thought giving Nixon 6+ mil annual to be a bonafide nickle CB and ST ace return man, was foolish and hasn't paid dividends.

he also gave Ballention over 2 mil. annual, I said about the same thing, there is other data CD that points out just how poorly they compare to other CB's in the league

[Cdragon]

Every move you make is of course a risk. Unfortunately they paid Nixon to be a returner in a age where KO returns are pretty much impossible.

[salmar80]

Every move you make is of course a risk. Unfortunately they paid Nixon to be a returner in a age where KO returns are pretty much impossible.

Winter is coming. No kickoffs into the end zone in that PIT/CLE snowglobe game...

But yeah, I don't like that the kickoff has been taken away from the game for majority of the season.

[BSA]

Unfortunately they paid Nixon to be a returner in a age where KO returns are pretty much impossible.

part of the reason teams kick it into the EZ vs GB is because Nixon is back there.
His presence can change the calculus