- Sauce Gardner reclaims the top spot: Gardner ranks first in lockdown rate, second in man-coverage grade and forced incompletion rate, and third in completion rate allowed. While Gardner is often criticized nationally, he’s been the NFL’s best cornerback since entering the league in 2022.
- Arizona's Will Johnson has been excellent as a rookie: There’s a tight battle for the top rookie in 2025, as just 0.05 points separate Johnson and Seahawks cornerback Nick Emmanwori. In Week 9, Johnson forced an incompletion on five targets and now owns a 22.6% forced incompletion rate, which ranks sixth in the NFL.
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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 achieve this in two ways: it can pressure the passer to disrupt their 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 2025 season. These rankings will change drastically over the first portion of the season, as one interception, one missed tackle or one deep completion can significantly alter a player's grade when the sample size is small. But as snap counts rise, the grades will stabilize and we'll get a clearer picture of the league's best cornerbacks.
Last year, these rankings utilized PFF All-Coverage charting and data to rank the cornerbacks, providing insights into PFF coverage grades and our Successful Coverage Over Expected (SCOE) metric, which measures how well each coverage defender performed above expectations 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 play-level normalization and expectation adjustments. After all, matching up with a receiver is more difficult than covering a running back, and playing man coverage is typically more difficult than matching in a zone.
Here are the top 32 cornerbacks in PFF’s advanced coverage grade after Week 9 of the 2025 season.
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