• Best overall coverage defender: Trent McDuffie, Kansas City Chiefs — Over the course of the year, McDuffie has posted the second-highest positive grade rate, leads the NFL in Lockdown Percentage by a wide margin and ranks fifth in PFF coverage grade. As a cornerstone of one of the league’s top defenses, McDuffie’s contributions have been instrumental to the Chiefs' success.
• Most forced incompletions: Denzel Ward, Cleveland Browns — Ward concluded the 2024 season with 17 forced incompletions and a league-leading 24.3% forced incompletion rate. While injuries have been a recurring challenge throughout his career, Ward showcased his elite potential when healthy, as evidenced by his record-setting pace over the first 13 weeks of the season.
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Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
If quarterback is the most important position on the football field, then limiting the effectiveness of that player is the most important thing a defense can do. A team can do this in two ways: It can pressure the passer to disrupt his timing, rhythm and accuracy, or it can shut down the opposing receivers.
Each week, after every NFL game is graded and reviewed, PFF will check in on the top cornerbacks of the 2024 season.
Last year, these rankings combined PFF coverage grades with our Successful Coverage Over Expected (SCOE) metric, which measures how well each coverage defender performed on non-targeted coverage snaps. We grade every coverage defender’s ability to prevent separation, whether they are targeted on the play or not.
These rankings utilize that same data this year but with play-level normalization and expectation adjustments. After all, matching up with a receiver is more difficult than covering running back, and playing man coverage is typically more difficult than matching in a zone.
Here are the top 32 cornerbacks at the conclusion of the 2024 regular season.
2024 cornerback rankings
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