Acme Packing Company
This position is tougher to nail down than many others, but we want to find the Packers’ best slot corner.
APC made its decisions this week on the best boundary cornerbacks of the 2000s era for the Green Bay Packers, and that CB2 position is one of the tightest votes in our entire All-Quarter Century Team series so far. Today we move our focus inside a bit more, looking at the team’s top slot cornerbacks from the past 25 years.
This is a bit of a difficult position to define, however. Only a handful of players have served even primarily as slot corners, let alone exclusively. While Charles Woodson was truly elite from the slot, those duties also largely coincided with his work on the boundary. And with him also earning outside CB1 honors, we’re keeping him there and looking to a handful of players who were truly slot players for much or most of their Packers careers.
3rd place in 2012 Defensive Rookie of the Year Voting
Regular season stats: 51 games, 20 starts; 168 total tackles (134 solo, 34 assisted), 6 TFLs; 9 interceptions (one returned for a TD), 34 pass defenses, 1 forced fumble, 2 fumble recoveries (one returned for a TD)
Postseason stats: 6 games, 2 starts; 20 total tackles (17 solo, 3 assisted), 1 TFL; 3 pass defenses
In 2012, the Packers loaded up on defense throughout the NFL Draft coming off a 2011 season that saw the team go 15-1 despite allowing the most yards of any NFL team. They went defense with each of their first six picks in that draft, selecting outside linebacker Nick Perry in round one (#28) and trading up in round two for Michigan State defensive tackle Jerel Worthy at pick number 51. Green Bay then traded back into the second round to select Hayward at 62, and the Vanderbilt product quickly became the team’s primary slot corner as a rookie.
Hayward was a bit on the smaller and slower side, but his elite agility times made him a perfect fit as a slot defender while Sam Shields and Tramon Williams manned the boundary positions. He recorded an astounding 20 pass breakups as a rookie and picked off six passes that year alone, landing him behind only Luke Kuechly and Bobby Wagner in the race for rookie of the year.
Much of Hayward’s second season was lost to a nagging hamstring injury, but he bounced back in 2014. Despite playing only about 40 percent of the team’s defensive snaps, he posted another three picks and a pair of fumble recoveries, taking one of each back for scores as the team marched towards the NFC Championship Game. Hayward got a little bit of run as a boundary corner in 2015, but that was limited as the Packers’ coaching staff seemed convinced that he was solely a slot corner.
Thus, the team did not make a major effort to re-sign him in...
