Boy oh boy do the Packers have a type at corner.
Hi everybody! I’m here today to offer a rigorously tested statistical framework that you can use at home to figure out which cornerback the Green Bay Packers are going to sign, or bring in for a visit, or draft. You will need to understand Relative Athletic Score (RAS), Kent Lee Platte’s ingenious metric that aggregates a player’s testing at the NFL Scouting Combine and/or their Pro Day to rank them athletically on a 10-point scale. You can read more about RAS here. Every RAS card also provides a list of players who most closely resemble that player athletically, known as their RAS comps, and for the most part, if you play outside corner for the Green Bay Packers, you will almost always find the same person on your RAS comp list. That player is Marshon Lattimore. It’s nuts.
It may not sound nuts at first, but please keep in mind that the RAS database contains over 2500 corners with ratings, and that any one of them could serve as a comparable. Even if you were to (correctly) point out that obviously the unathletic bad players will not wind up comped as much, there are a sold 245 9+ RAS rankings among corners, giving us plenty of options to choose from. You could go after guys who resemble Charles Tillman, or Jalen Ramsey, or Sam Shields, or Champ Bailey, or Desmond Trufant. The Packers go after Marshon Lattimore.
It’s not the worst idea to go after guys who resemble Marshon Lattimore. The former first-round pick, selected right between Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson in the 2017 draft, has been one of the NFL’s best corners throughout his career for the Saints, having made the Pro Bowl in four of his first five seasons, and winning Defensive Rookie of the Year. He’s suffered some injuries lately and he’s tapered off a bit, but that is just life in the NFL.
The Saints selected Lattimore in a draft where the Packers definitely had their eyes, and their analytics on defensive backs, as they selected both Kevin King (a 9.94 RAS) and Josh Jones in the second round. Lattimore went well before Green Bay could have plausibly drafted him, but I’d wager he was extremely high on their board, and had he fallen a few spots, who knows, maybe they would have pounced.
Lattimore is also an outstanding athlete, and posted a 9.99 RAS at the combine, running a 4.36 40-yard dash at a relatively tall 6-0, and 193 pounds. He is one of the best athletes ever to play the position, and so it’s not surprising a team would target that archetype. If you check out Lattimore’s RAS page, you will be able to see his RAS comps, and the first thing you’ll notice is that two of them are Packers.
After Shaq Griffin and Tevaughn Campbell, you’ll find Eric Stokes and Robert Rochell, but it doesn’t end there. Carrington Valentine posted an impressive 9.3 RAS prior to the 2023 NFL draft, with an impressive size/speed combination. His number one RAS comp: Marshon Lattimore. (His number four is Robert Rochell because of course it is.)
And what of newly signed corner Nate Hobbs and his 9.61 RAS, who ran a 4.48 at 5-11, 196 pounds and posted elite explosion metrics? Well, Lattimore does not appear on his top five RAS comps, but his fifth comp is Michael Stone out of Memphis way back in 2001. His top comp is, of course, Marshon Lattimore. Hobbs’ third comp is former Longhorn’s DB Josh Thompson, whose number four comp is Shaq Griffin. You may remember Griffin as one of the only players who was a closer comp to Lattimore than Eric Stokes or Robert Rochell. And so, while Nate Hobbs might not be quite as close to Lattimore as several other Packers DBs, he’s still in the neighborhood and seems to possess many of the athletic qualities that the Packers truly value. He should fit right in.
Oh, hey, also, his top RAS comp is Corey Ballentine.
