Hogs Haven
The Commanders’ second season under the Peters/Quinn regime has started out as a roller coaster ride, with the team alternating between wins and losses each week so far.
As we pass the quarter season mark, players are beginning to accumulate enough playing time to begin getting a feel of how they are doing from a statistical perspective. While injuries to key players have dominated the headlines in the early part of season, there have also been some breakout performances by young players, and some strong performances from new additions and returning vets, including some of the oldest players on the roster.
To give fans something to read as we wait for the Commanders to take on the Chicago Bears on Monday Night Football, I thought this would be a good time to recap some of the stronger performances by the team’s players, including a few which are flying under the radar.
So here is a recap of Commanders who are at or near the top of leader boards, real or made up for the occasion, after five games.
2025 Draft, Round 2, Pick 61
2025 Stats: 5 Games | 254 Def Snaps | 2 PD | 15 Tgt | 8 Rec | 100 yds | 7 tkl | 4 asst | 1 stop
Rather than the obvious choice, I decided to start by highlighting one of the more impressive players in the rookie class who is not getting the attention he deserves because we don’t know how to grade players at his position.
When people compare CBs, they usually talk about interceptions and pass breakups. While these can be game-changing plays, they are also rare events that happen at most a few times a game. What we should be comparing is how CBs perform in their primary assignment – covering receivers to prevent targets and receptions.
Readers who are familiar with my articles will know I have been promoting Yards/Coverage Snap (Y/Cov Snap) as a metric for CB performance in coverage. As it turns out, it was one of the metrics that impressed the Commanders when they were evaluating Trey in the draft process. Y/Cov Snap is the rate of yardage allowed in coverage. It represents the net outcome of everything a CB does to contain his receivers, including jamming routes, preventing separation and defending passes in the air. Dividing receiving yardage allowed in coverage by the number of coverage snaps enables fair comparison between CBs with different amounts of playing time.
The following table shows the top 20 lockdown corners among “starting” CBs through Week 5. In actual fact, “starts” is a fairly meaningless stat for CBs, so instead I ranked the 96 players with the most playing time. That resulted in a threshold of 125 defensive snaps. The table also shows the top 20 ballhawks. These are the starting CBs with the highest rate of Passes Defended (PD %), which is Pass Breakups + Interceptions as a percentage of Coverage Snaps.
Through five...
