- New team, same Sauce Gardner: Gardner was targeted four times in Week 10 and surrendered just two catches for 19 yards and a single first down, holding opposing quarterbacks to a 53.5 passer rating on throws into his coverage. He nearly capped his Colts debut with an interception, jumping a route that slipped through his hands, but even without the pick, his performance was textbook. His 71.4% lockdown rate ranked eighth among all cornerbacks.
- Will Johnson is still enjoying a terrific rookie year: Johnson’s rookie campaign hit a brief pause in Week 10 due to a back injury, but his early-season body of work has already made a statement. Through 10 weeks, the Cardinals cornerback owns a 74.9 PFF coverage grade, and his metrics back up the tape.
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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 10 of the 2025 season.
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