Who Was the Packers' Best Defensive Back in 2023?

We’ve spent a good deal of time recently sorting through the performances of the Packers’ defensive backs in 2023. As a part of my analysis, I looked into how they did when targeted in coverage, using Pro Football Focus’s targeting data.

These aren’t perfect numbers. They don’t, for instance, tell us how good of a job a guy did when he was in coverage but wasn’t targeted. But they at least give us some kind of context, and since podcasts aren’t an ideal medium for sharing numbers, here’s the collected data on how each of the Packers’ defensive backs who played at least 100 snaps on defense did in coverage.

A couple of observations here. First, though Keisean Nixon gave up the most yards in coverage, he was fifth-best in terms of yards per target allowed. I think that indicates the yards he gave up were mostly a function of being on the field the most of anyone in the cornerback group. By nature of the fact that he played in the slot, he probably gave up shorter completions, potentially driving down his yards per target number a bit, but not necessarily a lot.

Second, how cool is it that Carrington Valentine put up such good numbers as a rookie? He played a far bigger role than was probably good for him in 2023, but he responded well and had some of the best raw coverage numbers on the team.

Third, the Packers clearly just wanted to move on from Rudy Ford. Numbers don’t tell the whole story, but his playing time diminished dramatically over the course of the season, despite putting up better coverage numbers than anybody else.

Finally, how abysmal was Eric Stokes’ 2023 season? He played just two games on defense and spend basically the entirety of those two games getting absolutely burned to a crisp. Only Jonathan Owens gave up more touchdowns over the course of the season, and his dataset includes all 19 games the Packers played. To quote esteemed football analyst Kevin McCallister: “Woof.”