Darrelle Revis is having a stellar season, dominating receivers in his role at cornerback for the New York Jets. His numbers in coverage this year have been nothing short of ridiculous.
Ike Taylor has similar numbers in a variety of areas, and some people are claiming that he is having almost as good a season as Revis is. Superficially, it makes some sense: despite being thrown at 46 times, Taylor has allowed just 14 receptions for 152 yards and hasn’t been beaten for a reception longer than 31 yards all season. Revis has allowed just 10 receptions on 33 targets, and has yet to allow a touchdown. A quick glance at the numbers does raise the question, but reality, on this occasion, deviates from the numbers … or at least most of them.
Stacking Up
Revis isn’t just preventing receptions, he’s actively punishing quarterbacks for daring to throw into his coverage. He's caught (four) or deflected (six) as many passes as he has allowed, all without allowing a touchdown and actually scoring one of his own, but Ike Taylor has yet to pick-off a pass and has only gotten his hands to two. Maybe you won’t get receptions from throwing at Taylor, but there isn’t anything like the same disincentive to keep trying that there is with Revis.
Part of what makes Revis so special is that he is limiting receivers to scraps despite tracking receivers across the field, being assigned the task of shutting down an opponent’s best receiving option, allowing the Jets more freedom in coverage elsewhere. Ike Taylor has been doing the same for the Steelers this season. Does he therefore deserve the same praise, since he is often performing the same task and has allowed similarly stingy receiving numbers ? The short answer is no. He has not even been in the same ballpark.
His numbers represent some good examples of why statistics can tell mis-truths. Ike Taylor has a PFF coverage grade of -2.4 so far this season. That mark is good for 42nd in the NFL among starting corners. Not exactly Deion Sanders territory. What does that grade mean? Well, the grade tells more than any base stat and raw number ever will. If a player is beaten, but the quarterback overthrows a wide open receiver deep, he will still be negatively graded. We don’t reward corners for being fortunate enough to escape a completion through a poor throw or a drop by the receiver. In essence, our grading brings some context to the raw numbers that can, on occasion, lie to you. By comparison, Revis has a coverage grade of +10.5, comfortably at the top of our cornerback grades.
The Matchups
Part of the logic behind the claim that Taylor has had a great season lies in the quality of receiver he has shut down, but that’s not necessarily accurate. While Revis has been through a Who’s Who of receiving elite in the past few seasons (and rarely been exposed) Taylor is getting credit for some players he never really has to deal with, so let’s look at some of those encounters.
In Week 1, he did do a good job on Lee Evans, preventing him from recording a single catch on four targets, but Evans is something of an unknown quantity having been M.I.A. for quite some time now. In Week 2, he faced Seattle, playing without Sidney Rice. He didn’t track anybody, and Mike Williams was only targeted when covered by Taylor once – catching that pass for nine yards.
Against the Colts the next week, Taylor didn’t allow a single reception, but that was far from the whole story. He was beaten badly on a double move only for Curtis Painter to badly overthrow Pierre Garcon on what would have been a big touchdown. He was also beaten comfortably on a couple of more occasions only for Kerry Collins to miss his receiver or the receiver to drop the ball. Taylor had a great statistical day, but earned a -1.9 PFF grade for his coverage in that game.
He tracked Texans receiver Andre Johnson, but Johnson only ran 12 routes in the game before being injured. Johnson was thrown at twice and caught one pass for eight yards and a first down. Tennessee (without Kenny Britt) and Jacksonville have no real wide receiving weapons of note, so it is not surprising that Taylor did well in those games, even if he did concede a penalty and a touchdown against the Jaguars, but then came Larry Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald took Taylor to task, catching just two of eight passes thrown his way in Taylor’s coverage, but also forcing a defensive pass interference penalty, a defensive holding call and one for illegal contact. Taylor essentially traded receiving yardage for penalty yardage, but the result was the same: the Cardinals moved down the field because of Ike Taylor’s matchup. He also dodged a killer bullet in this game, with Fitzgerald beating him badly deep only to have Kevin Kolb overthrow him by so much Troy Polamamu dropped an interception. Taylor owes a lot to Kolb for that miss. Looking at the stats alone, Taylor doesn’t look poor, in fact it looks like a successful day for the Steeler, but looking a little deeper at how Taylor performed shows this just isn’t true – he earned a -5.6 from PFF; a disastrous grade.
Taylor did track Wes Welker for much of the Patriots game (though was also on Branch a fair amount), and though he did a pretty good job of limiting Welker’s yardage (just 32), he did allow five of the six passes thrown his way to be complete. This performance actually demonstrated the close coverage play that has been absent for some of his play this season.
The Bottom Line
We’re not trying to belittle Ike Taylor's season – given the job the Steelers are asking him to do, he is performing well. Not many corners in this league can track an opponent’s top receiver and come away from games having won matchups, but to suggest he is doing the job as well as Revis this season is preposterous.
Ike Taylor is holding his own against some top receivers even if he is a little fortunate not to have markedly poorer coverage statistics, whereas Darrelle Revis is dominating receivers and punishing quarterbacks for testing him. Taylor has acquitted himself admirably at a task given to few corners in this league, and has managed to dodge a few killer bullets that his play alone deserved to catch. While he may not be in the same company as Darrelle Revis, whatever the raw numbers say, who is?
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