Christian Benford and Maxwell Hairston are “penciled in” as the Buffalo Bills starting outside cornerbacks right now — not my words, but those from Brandon Beane in his post-draft press conference about a month ago.
The “penciled in” comment came in response to a question about the team’s second-round selection of boundary corner Davison Igbinosun.
Given the extraordinary lack of depth at that specific position, we probably should have seen Buffalo drafting an outside corner reasonably early coming.
But I want to circle back to the words from Beane that Benford and Hairston are only “penciled in” as the starters. Now, I have long loathed press-conference analysis but I’ll be a masochist here for a few sentences.
Maybe Beane slightly misspoke. Maybe he was subtly defending the club’s decision to address cornerback with its second pick in the 2026 draft. Maybe the team really doesn’t view Benford and Hairston as absolute, locked-in starters on the outside right now.
We know Hairston is a young, twitched-up, sub 4.30 corner — his skill set screams man coverage. That leaves Benford, and raises the question; is he well-suited to play presumably more man coverage in Jim Leonhard’s new defensive scheme?
Before we dig in, it’s important to frame man-coverage rates in the modern-day NFL. Last season, Myles Harden had the highest man-coverage rate among qualifying cornerbacks at 45.4%.
The season before, only four cornerbacks in the entire league were above 50%. In 2023 and 2021, no qualifying cornerback even reached 50% in man-coverage rate. The NFL is very much a zone-coverage league.
In 2025, the Denver Broncos were in man 36.1% of the time — the second-highest rate in the league. The season before, Leonhard’s first in Denver, they played man 34.3% of their defensive snaps, the fourth-highest rate in football, per SumerSports.
Of course, Leonhard wasn’t raised in Vance Joseph’s defense. But as a player he thrived with Rex Ryan, fundamentally a man-coverage proponent.
Here are Benford’s man-coverage statistics to date in his NFL career with the Bills, per PFF:
*regular season only
Those figures convert to a 110.7 passer rating allowed, which seems high. PFF does not have him with an interception in man coverage yet as a professional.
For perspective on that passer rating, I calculated the NFL average passer rating allowed on all man-coverage targets in 2025, and it was 101.2, which does give vital perspective on the rating Benford has surrendered in man to date.
At 6’0 1/2” and around 205-210 pounds without supreme length or explosiveness and 4.53 speed, from an on-paper physical perspective, Benford is not the type of corner you’d project into a man-coverage heavy role. There’s no way around it.
I do believe Benford processes routes and route concepts on pass plays at a borderline elite level, which regularly keeps him close to throwing windows which he can quick slam shut. The 11 forced incompletions — which PFF measures as INTs + PBUs + “tight coverage” is an impressive number on just 53 targets.
Also, with man coverage, simply not allowing throws in your coverage area is a key element of the job and almost always represents a won rep for the defender.
In 2010, one in which he earned First-Team All-Pro honors, Darrelle Revis did not have an interception in the regular season. He registered just 10 pass breakups. On 488 coverage snaps that year, he was only targeted 57 times, the 73rd-most among all cornerbacks, which is downright absurd.
We didn’t — and still don’t — have an established way to quantify those stifling man-coverage reps that lead to the ball being thrown in another direction.
I don’t expect Benford to become Revis 2.0 — or anywhere close to a “specialist” in man coverage. At times, he might even struggle.
But his subtle physicality at the line and during the route along with keen coverage instincts should make him passable if his man-coverage rate jumps into the 30% range this season for the first time in his Bills career.
And don’t forget — Benford retains immense value because of his zone brilliance. Entering 2026, he’s allowed a passer rating of just 68.5 in his coverage area when playing zone. Even with Leonhard, Benford will be in zone 65% – 70% of the time on this Bills defense.
