Not really; his rate stats compared favorably to the best CBs in the league. They weren't successful with any great frequency against him but teams had to score a lot against us and play a fair amount of catchup so they attacked through the air a ton.

I mean c'mon - a 53% completion percentage and 77 QB rating is ass. That's worse than Blake Bortles and that's how QBs did when throwing at Nelson.

The hate Nelson gets here is laughable - that guy had a good year and is a solid NFL starting quarterback. The market is gonna reward him handsomely for it and while he may never be that solid again, it's silly to say he wasn't a good player for the Chiefs this season.

He was. Not great, but good.

"With the regular season in the books, we are counting down the highest-graded cornerbacks this season in the NFL. With every throw and catch attributed to someone in coverage this season, here’s who played the best.

[Editor’s Note: The list below purely runs off our Player Grades, which are made available to all of our EDGE and ELITE subscribers.]"

You need to have that subscription for a year before you realize how biased those figures are. I had one about 4 years back and noted back then that you can watch a game that you're completely disinterested in and see where those graders are just wrong. The year I noticed it was probably 2013 when Chandler Jones was outstanding and Ninkovich was also very good. PFF had Jones grading negatively on the year and Ninkovich, who in my eyes was good but not quite as good as Jones, was grading out as elite.

The PFF grader just flat !@#$ing didn't like Chandler Jones and really like Ninkovich. It was weird but you could go through it week after week and it just jumped out at you.

Worse, the sample size, though seemingly large given that it's an entire year, is still pretty damn small. One bad game can torch a guys entire season.

PFF is a tool but it's not an answer. But here it doesn't really need to be - there were other measures that Nelson performed well in also. And ultimately PFF does a nice job of establishing general tiers - if you're 'ranked' 20th by PFF, I don't have a problem saying you're somewhere in the firmly above average to good range. I won't concede that you were the 20th best CB, but even with some fudge factor it's fair to say you're probably in the 30-40 range at worst.

Nelson was fine this year.

I honestly question their player grades at times.

Chung is a safety.

And a leader of men.

Why the **** are you allowed to say this completely reasonable shit but when I do it’s the prime example of me being a huge homer?


LMAO

Because you're a huge homer and I'm reasonable.

It's one of those "a broken watch is right twice a day" things. You should just be happy that you get to agree with me sometimes...

ROFL

Totally fair and extremely easy to do when you have the full access (which I cancelled when they took half their shit behind a paywall and stuck it into an even higher tier that you could either pay 3 times as much for on an annual basis or pay something like 40% of the previous annual prescription fee per month to get).

It was a ridiculous gouge so I told them to **** off, especially after I saw so many questionable ratings on a week to week basis.

Those guys are no less prone to confirmation bias than anyone.

Lol **** you!

Probs 8 more times.

I never felt comfortable with Nelson going against good receivers or big receivers. I was always expecting him to get beat deep at least once a game and to have at least one big penalty.

I just go with my gut and eyes with this deal. I’ve rarely ever watched Chiefs games with Nelson in them and thought, damn, that’s a really solid CB. He just gives up too many big plays either via catch or flag, especially in big moments. He rarely ever played well in big games, and his ball skills are far below average.

this.

grammar matters

That's true ... up to a point, Mr. DJ's left nut.

On the other hand, a defense WANTS to force the enemy to be one-dimensional. Whether it's run or pass, you want to know what's coming ... so you can be better prepared. It's an age-old football motif. It gives the defense a significant advantage. (Of course, I'm not telling you anything you don't know.)

But given that basic fact, in a world where we KNOW the enemy is going to pass, it's reasonable to expect that we should have been far more effective defending the air game. Heck, it's one of the reasons the pass rush stats were good for the Chiefs this year.

Recognizing that the opponent is often playing "catch-up" doesn't let the d-backfield off the hook. Considering that we could expect that the majority of snaps are going to be pass-oriented (combined with the fact that our pass rush was reasonably effective), I question why we gave up so many crucial, big plays at critical times. The circumstances and conditions should have favored our DBs. I can't say they did.

FAX

You shouldn't have. He's not an elite DB and the rules are tilted towards the offense, notably the passing game. And?

I never felt comfortable with Flowers against premier receivers or large receivers either - but he was still solid. And again, I know what you expect and why, but the numbers simply don't bear it out. So you can cling to your expectations and preconceived notions if you want, but it's not exactly fair to do so and then call it a rational argument - it ain't.

When it comes to a position like CB, especially in a passing league, everything is relative. Relative to his peers, Nelson was solid to good.

They do and they don't.

Let's also recognize that yes, there is an advantage of knowing what's coming...and a disadvantage of not reaaaaaly caring all that much. because you saw how Sutton aligned those DBs out there, didn't you? He had those guys screaming backwards at the snap way too damn often. When Sutton had them going backwards in that bend but don't break stuff, a man corner has little to no chance to just lock someone down. He's gonna give up yards.

Moreover, when you say that the Chiefs defensive backfield gave up a ton of big plays - those would've been reflected in his overall numbers and they simply weren't. On a rate basis, he simply wasn't beaten all that often. It's DAMN hard to just disregard a 53% completion percentage against and yet many are trying to do that.

I'm not trying to oversell Nelson here and say he's an elite CB - but I think he's been given awfully short shrift because A) many didn't like the pick to begin with (myself loudly included), B) he was trash in 2017 and C) Well...he's kind of a shithead.

But that doesn't mean that he wasn't solid last year - he was. And when he was out there keeping half the throws in his general direction from being completed and allowed few enough deep completions against him to hold QBs throwing at him to a rating lower than Blake Bortles...well damn, just how bad could he have been?

We just forget the times he did his job well because he's easy to dislike. He's an undersized, mouthy, physical corner who seems to get a kick out of antagonizing fans and needs that chip on his shoulder to get up to play. That's easy to root against. But he still didn't suck last year as a general rule.