In a season that’s sunk before Thanksgiving, rookie cornerback Darien Porter is one of the players on the Las Vegas Raiders’ roster that the fanbase seems to be most interested in. The third-round pick has intriguing traits, but the Raiders’ Week 12 matchup against the Cleveland Browns was just his fourth start of the season.
Granted, Porter is seeing the field more often recently, moving up Las Vegas’ depth chart to make three starts in the last four games and becoming a part of the defense’s rotation
over the last month. Specifically looking at this past Sunday, he participated in 25 total snaps (13 in coverage, 12 against the run) and wasn’t targeted on the afternoon, according to Pro Football Focus.
But of course, the numbers only tell part of the story. So, let’s flip on the tape and see how the Iowa State product looked.
Porter’s performance was a mixed bag on Sunday, with a handful of both positive and negative reps. We’ll start with a couple of bad ones to end on a high note.
Don’t get me wrong, Darnay Holmes is the bigger issue here, as Holmes gets absolutely cooked on the pylon route for an explosive play. But this is a rep the rookie will want back, too.
The Browns come out in an empty formation with the running back lined up at tight end next to the offensive line, and the Raiders respond by dialing up the heat with a Cover 0 call. That puts Porter one-on-one in man coverage with no safety help against wide receiver Jerry Jeudy. While the corner is in press coverage, he doesn’t use his hands to jam the receiver and gets beaten off the line of scrimmage by the inside release.
That puts Porter in a tough position because he didn’t disrupt the timing of Jeudy’s route, and he ends up allowing separation against he dig route. Had Cleveland’s offensive line executed, and Holmes didn’t get cooked down the field, Shedeur Sanders hits Jeudy for a big gain over the middle of the field.
This next rep is another tough assignment since Las Vegas is in Cover 3 and the Browns call a Cover 3-beater with a dig route from Jeudy. Also, it doesn’t help matters that the underneath defenders don’t get enough depth to help tighten the throwing window over the middle of the field.
However, especially with the slot receiver working across the field and no other vertical threats, Porter needs to do a better job of recognizing and driving on the dig route to be in a position to make a play on the ball through the receiver’s back. Luckily, Sanders leaves the pocket early and doesn’t throw with a stable base, so the pass is overthrown and falls incomplete.
For the record, this didn’t go down as a target because the roughing the passer penalty on Adam Butler wipes the play away and thus, the pass attempt off the stat sheet.
Moving on to the positive, this was Porter’s best rep of the afternoon.
Las Vegas is running a trap coverage where the defense is trying to sell the Cover 3 look to confuse Sanders. At the bottom of the screen, Eric Stokes passes off the crossing route to Elandon Roberts, which is a matchup the offense wants to take advantage of since they have a linebacker on a wide receiver.
Meanwhile, Porter sells the look by running with Jeudy on the vertical route for about 10 yards before coming off Jeudy and helping Roberts in coverage. Sanders takes the bait and tries to expose the mismatch in coverage, playing right into the defense’s hands as Porter nearly gets an interception. He might have had the pick if the pass had been more accurate.
Finally, this is a great rep by the rookie in press coverage against Jeudy to take away the first read in the offense’s play design.
Cleveland essentially has two play calls here: the slant at the top of the frame and a screen to the running back at the bottom. First, Sanders reads Las Vegas’ two linebackers and sees both Devin White and Jamal Adams open their hips toward the running back, so the quarterback wants to hit the slant route to Jeudy.
However, Porter does a great job of being patient at the line of scrimmage by keeping his hips square and not falling for the outside jab step on Jeudy’s press release. That keeps the cornerback in perfect position to defend the slant route, as he’s right on the receiver’s back, so Sanders has to come off the read and throw the screen route for an incompletion.
Again, Porter’s performance as a whole was up and down as he had a handful of quality reps in coverage and a few others where he gave up separation. That’s going to happen with a young corner who hasn’t gotten much playing time, and what’s frustrating is that he seems to be on a short leash. For example, after the two negative plays above, he was rotated out of the game for a few series.
Maybe that was the coaching staff’s plan all along and was just a coincidence, but they certainly gave Kyu Blu Kelly more leeway at the beginning of the season, and it’s time to take the training wheels off for the rookie.
