Throughout the 2025 NFL season, SB Nation’s Doug Farrar will write about the game’s Secret Superstars — those players whose performances might slip under the radar for whatever reasons. In this installment, we focus on Buffalo Bills cornerback Christian Benford, who overcame a brutal start to the 2025 season to turn it all around, right when his reeling defense needed him the most.
Over the last five years, the Buffalo Bills’ offense has changed quite a lot. Back in 2020, this was a heavy 11 personnel
team (one running back, one tight end, three receivers) with common 3 x 1 receiver deployment, and the run game as a productive add-on. It helped to have Stefon Diggs, who led the NFL in targets, catches, and receiving yards that season. Now, that’s obviously different. This season, the Bills have run the ball on 49.4% of their snaps, they lead the NFL with 157.8 rushing yards per game and 5.1 rushing yards per play, and they’re far more personnel-diverse. Last season, they led the NFL in 6OL personnel by far; this season, it’s been more about having two tight ends and two running backs on the field. Overall, it’s worked out pretty well — the Bills ranked fourth in Offensive DVOA in 2020; they’re seventh as things stand today.
The Bills’ defense is different, too. Back in 2020, Sean McDermott and his staff ran as much nickel defense with five defensive backs on the field as anyone; now they’re calling far more dime defenses with six defensive backs, and the blitz rate has gone way down — from 35.8% in 2020 to 20.1% in 2025.
What else has gone way down is the effectiveness of that defense. In 2020, the Bills ranked 11th in Defensive DVOA; they shot up to first overall in 2021, second in 2022, 12th in 2023, 11th in 2024, and 22nd through Week 14 of the 2025 season. The decline has come for all the usual reasons — age, injuries, evaluation shortfalls — but if the Bills are to finally reach their dream of a Super Bowl appearance in the Josh Allen era, somebody is going to have to step the hell up and do something about the slide.
Over the last two weeks, that someone has been cornerback Christian Benford, the 2022 sixth-round pick out of Villanova who has earned his place over time as the team’s best player at his position. Like everyone else on this defense in 2025, Benford has had his rough days, especially early in the season when he was dealing with a groin injury. In Weeks 1-5, Benford allowed 17 catches on 24 targets for 182 yards, four touchdowns, no interceptions, no pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 132.3.
Yes, things have become MUCH better. Since Week 6, Benford has been a completely different player, allowing nine catches on 19 targets for 121 yards, no touchdowns, no pass breakups, two interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 28.5. That is by far the NFL’s lowest passer rating allowed since Week 6 among any cornerback playing at least 50% of his team’s snaps — Jamel Dean of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers ranks second at 39.4.
And as everybody reading this on Buffalo Rumblings already knows, Benford made the most of his two picks in a situational sense. The first interception came with 13:22 left in the third quarter of Buffalo’s 26-7 Week 13 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers. Benford was playing bail coverage on the defensive right side, which allowed him to read Mason Rudolph’s overthrow to tight end Darnell Washington, and take the ball away. On the drive before that, Benford was in on a blitz, Joey Bosa sacked Aaron Rodgers, and Benford took the subsequent fumble 17 yards for the touchdown. Rodgers was injured on the play, which led to Rudolph on the field. In that game, Benford was aligned on D.K. Metcalf on 13 of Metcalf’s 22 routes and he didn’t allow a single catch.
For all of that, Benford won AFC Defensive Player of the Week. But he was far from done. The most important interception was yet to come. With 5:25 left in the fourth quarter of the Bills’ Week 14 game against the Cincinnati Bengals, the Bills were down, 28-25. Benford was aligned in press coverage against Ja’Marr Chase, but he didn’t stay there. Instead, when Burrow tried to hit chase on a quick swing pass, Benford had already read it out, got the pick by rushing straight at Burrow, and that was that. 63 yards later, the Bills were up, 31-28, and that was a lead they would not surrender in a 39-34 final.
Per Next Gen Stats, that pick-six increased the Bills’ win probability by 60.8 percentage points (from 16.2% to 77.0%), the single biggest win probability swing on a play outside of the last two minutes in the NGS era (since 2016).
As Bengals head coach Zac Taylor noted postgame, that particular hot release route is exactly what the quarterback is supposed to throw against a blitzing cornerback — what the quarterback does not expect is what Benford was able to do.
“It’s for the corner coming off the edge,” Taylor said when asked if he was nervous when Benford was converging. “He had great awareness. It’s very rare that you see a guy have that awareness when we’re attacking him there, and make a play like that. Great play by him.”
“It was a blitz, so they called my number,”Benford said of the play. “I was trying to disguise. I didn’t know what was about to happen… I was trying to do my technique. I actually didn’t do my technique right, if we’re being honest. I was peeping, and then [Burrow] said go. He hiked it, and I went for a blitz. I low-key was expecting a run, so I was expecting a tackle, but I saw him, like, crank back and look for the narrow throw, and I wasn’t supposed to jump. Like, the technique is don’t leave your feet.
“I don’t know. God just gave me something for me to leave my feet. You know what I’m saying? And then, yeah, the rest was history.“
Whoever was responsible in the moment, it allowed Benford to be a true game-changer for the second straight week. Now, the Bills are 9-4 and on a good postseason pace. Without their best cornerback stepping up over and over when needed, that might not be the case.
