What if the Green Bay Packers’ cornerbacks aren’t nearly as bad as people thought they would be coming into the year? A lot of ink has been spilled over the last two years about the Packers’ cornerback room
and how the team should have addressed the position earlier in recent drafts, but they’re actually looking pretty solid this year.
Below is a graph that shows where the Packers’ three primary cornerbacks rank in coverage snaps and yards per coverage snap allowed, per NFL Pro. This is one of the most stable statistics you can look at for coverage defenders.
Both Keisean Nixon and Carrington Valentine are performing above the NFL average right now, Valentine significantly above it, while Nate Hobbs, who has missed the last two games with a knee injury, has not performed well at outside cornerback. Among the 70 outside cornerbacks who have played at least as many snaps as Hobbs this year, Valentine ranks 20th (firmly CB1 territory), Nixon ranks 34th (borderline CB1 territory) and Hobbs ranks 56th (bottom-8 starter territory) in yards allowed per coverage snap this season.
So here’s the question I have for you: What if the Packers never had a cornerback problem at all? What if it was just a Hobbs-specific problem? On paper, the replacement of Hobbs for Valentine seems to have gone great. Finding a seventh-round pick (Valentine) and a veteran playing on a $4.7 million payout in 2025 (Nixon) to perform like this would generally be celebrated…but that obviously comes with the hook that Hobbs, who received a $48 million deal this offseason, was a swing and a miss for the team.
With all that being said, it might be time to reset expectations for this team. The cornerback position, at least until an injury, actually seems to be fine. Where the team is really struggling in the coverage department is at linebacker, where Quay Walker and Edgerrin Cooper have both allowed over 250 yards through the air each and at least one touchdown this year. Walker ranks 11th among linebackers in yards allowed this season, while Cooper is 18th, per NFL Pro.
Hopefully, Green Bay rides it out with Valentine and Nixon even when Hobbs is healthy, but we’ll just have to see if the Packers are going to force their big-time investment into the lineup over a better-performing find, like Green Bay did for years when they played Eric Stokes over Valentine.
