Acme Packing Company
Written on chalky candy heart: Stay as close to me as Carrington stays to wide receivers.
There were only three Green Bay Packers corners to play over 300 coverage snaps last season, and the player with the best PFF Grade of those three, at a light green 71.4, was Carrington Valentine. Jaire Alexander did manage to out-grade Valentine, but due to injuries, Alexander only played in seven games. So when push came to shove it all came down to Valentine, Corey Ballentine, Eric Stokes, Keisean Nixon, and a bit of Javon Bullard. And of that group, Valentine was the man. On this day, let us give thanks for our own special Valentine.
The Packers picked Carrington Valentine with the 232nd overall pick (7th round) in the 2023 draft, and he has consistently exceeded expectations ever since. Valentine was projected as a sixth rounder by Dane Brugler in the 2023 version of The Beast, and looking back on Dane’s write-up with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it’s pretty incredible that Valentine fell instead of moving up. While Brugler did highlight some technique problems and his somewhat thin frame, the positives far outweighed the negatives, especially considering that Valentine was somewhat new to the position, having converted from wide receiver to corner as a junior in high school.
When picking in the later rounds of the draft (especially the sixth and seventh) you usually have to compromise on at least a few traits. You may find a try-hard small school natural-born leader with a three RAS. You may find an 8+ RAS athletic star who just doesn’t have a feel for the game, and if you do find a random leftover great athlete with great on-field skills, they will generally come with some additional red flag.
Valentine had a 9.30 RAS, and like all recent Packers’ corner draft picks, his top RAS comp is Marshon Lattimore, so athleticism wasn’t the issue. (His fourth comp is Robert Rochell, by the way.) Valentine played in the SEC for Kentucky, and so level of competition wasn’t an issue. In the 2022 season, he led the team in passes defended with 11 while recording one interception, and while Brugler notes the lack of picks as an issue, Valentine was consistently around the ball.
The main problem with Carrington Valentine seemed to be a lack of technique in certain situations (high pointing the ball) and a tendency to get grabby (again, Happy Valentine’s Day). But given his lack of experience at the position, there is and was still some projectability in his profile. For a seventh-round pick, that level of athleticism, plus progress on the field in the SEC plus the fact that he is just now entering his age 24 season, makes him as good a seventh-round prospect as I’ve seen over the past four or five seasons.
As previously mentioned, Valentine was also one of the Packers’ best corners this year, and arguably their best (though FTN preferred Keisean Nixon, who also played an additional...
