• Sauce Gardner remains the gold standard: Gardner’s 28% forced incompletion rate and 44% completion rate allowed both rank third in the NFL. His 13.8% open-target rate is the second best in the league, while his 73.74% lockdown rate leads all cornerbacks.

• Jamel Dean is in the middle of a career year: The Bucs cornerback has three interceptions, including a pick-six, which drives his -0.543 EPA allowed per target. He ranks 10th in lockdown rate, eighth in advanced coverage grade and third in positive grade rate.

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If quarterback is the most important position on the football field, then limiting the effectiveness of that player is the most important thing a defense can do.

A team can achieve this in two ways: it can pressure the passer to disrupt their timing, rhythm and accuracy, or it can shut down the opposing receivers.

Each week, after every NFL game is graded and reviewed, PFF will check in on the top cornerbacks of the 2025 season.

These rankings utilize PFF All-Coverage charting and data to rank the cornerbacks, providing insights into PFF coverage grades and our Successful Coverage Over Expected (SCOE) metric, which measures how well each coverage defender performed above expectations on non-targeted coverage snaps.

We grade every coverage defender’s ability to prevent separation, whether they are targeted on the play or not. These rankings utilize play-level normalization and expectation adjustments. After all, matching up with a receiver is more difficult than covering a running back, and playing man coverage is typically more difficult than matching in a zone.

Here are the top 32 cornerbacks in PFF’s advanced coverage grade after Week 11 of the 2025 season.