Considering that star cornerback Jaire Alexander has played less than a half-season in three of his past four years with the Green Bay Packers, on top of the defensive back having a $16.15 million base salary in 2025, there’s a good chance that the club is going to add a starting cornerback to their lineup this offseason. With that in mind, let’s take a look at what the upcoming free agency class has to offer, from a metrics perspective.

In my opinion, the best way to use metrics is by looking at multi-year numbers. This helps weed out one-year wonders, players who missed time due to injuries or players who played through injuries. A stat that I find a lot of value in is Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt (ANY/A), which is more correlated to wins than passer rating for quarterbacks.

Essentially, ANY/A treats touchdowns like a 20-yard bonus for offenses and interceptions as -45-yard dings. Since you don’t pay cornerbacks to rack up sacks, we’re just going to ignore that part of the methodology for this exercise.

Using NFL Pro’s data, which is the league-sponsored player tracking numbers, we can find out just how many yards and touchdowns each outside cornerback has allowed over the last two seasons, on just how many coverage snaps. Using those numbers, we can make apples-to-apples comparisons for these cornerbacks.

As a side note, the outside cornerback position is important in the context of the Packers because they are likely to keep 2024 second-round pick safety Javon Bullard in the slot moving forward. Based on how the team deployed their secondary in the second half of the season, that’s Bullard’s spot long-term.

With NFL Pro’s numbers, we can learn that Packers cornerback Carrington Valentine allowed 645 yards and a touchdown on 691 coverage snaps over the last two years when he played outside cornerback…but what’s the context of that within the frame of the entire league? Well, Valentine’s ANY/A, if we treated coverage snaps as attempts, would have been 0.9 over those snaps. The league average for the 98 outside cornerbacks who played at least 347 coverage snaps (the volume Keisean Nixon hit) over the last two years is 1.08. So Valentine is playing about 0.18 adjusted yards better per coverage snap than the league-average outside cornerback over the last two years, bringing in +128.6 adjusted yards of value for the Packers over that time.

Now that we’ve laid down the groundwork, here’s how the Packers’ current cornerbacks rank compared to qualifiers (98 outside cornerbacks) over the last two years:

Packers Cornerbacks

• +128.6 adjusted yards of value: Carrington Valentine (23rd among 98 qualifiers)
• +34.3: Jaire Alexander (41st)
• +15.1 Keisean Nixon (45th)
• -63.8 Eric Stokes (70th)

As a reminder, a score of 0 would be dead average. Each of Valentine, Alexander and Nixon are playing like low-end CB1s to mid-level CB2s, in part because none of them have been starting at outside cornerback consistently, while Eric Stokes is well behind the trio.

How many cornerbacks on the free agent market would be an improvement to the group the Packers have? I’m glad you asked. Using these numbers, we can answer that exact question.

Top Free Agent Cornerbacks

• +286.9: Rasul Douglas (6th)
• +174.5 D.J. Reed (16th)
• +142.0 Paulson Adebo (21st)
• +115.4: Byron Murphy (25th)
• +46.0: Charvarius Ward (38th)
• +45.5: Asante Samuel (39th)
• +19.5: Stephon Gilmore (44th)
• -26.1 Jonathan Jones (60th)
• -225.7: Carlton Davis (87th)

The list above includes all of the cornerbacks who made Pro Football Focus’ top 100 free agents list, excluding Nate Hobbs and Mike Hilton. Hobbs and Hilton combined for 113 outside cornerback snaps over the last two seasons. For perspective, Nixon, who mostly played nickelback until the second half of the 2024 season, posted 347. Again, the nickel is Bullard’s spot moving forward.

Only five players rank ahead of former Packer Rasul Douglas in this metric: Jaylon Johnson, Derek Stingley Jr., Christian Benford, Jalen Ramsey and Marshon Lattimore. 2024 Defensive Player of the Year Patrick Surtain II is 8th on the list over the last two years because he had a significantly better 2024 season than he did in 2023. For perspective, Sutain gave up just 260 yards and two touchdowns (making three interceptions) in 2024. In 2023, he allowed 454 yards and four touchdowns (no interceptions).

As far as “needle movers” go, these numbers suggest that Douglas, D.J. Reed, Paulson Adebo and Byron Murphy are the only cornerbacks who are “CB1 caliber” based on their last two seasons of play. You might be surprised to see how low Carlton Davis ranks, but his numbers are truly poor. The Packers’ outside cornerback who has allowed the most yards over the last two years, based on NFL Pro’s tracking data, is Valentine with 645 yards. Davis alone has given up 1,118, despite his 2024 season ending early with a fractured jaw.