The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - The disappearance of the star cornerback, with Domonique Foxworth

Episode Date: November 16, 2024

Justin Jefferson: Four years, $140 million. CeeDee Lamb: Four years, $136 million. Amon-Ra St. Brown: Four years, $120 million. A.J. Brown: Three years, $96 million. The market for wide receivers has exploded in recent years. But what about the players tasked with slowing them down...the cornerbacks? Their market has stagnated. Moreover, the position that defined cool in the era of Deion Sanders seems almost devoid of superstars in 2024. What happened to the star cornerback? Robert Mays explores that question with Domonique Foxworth, who covers the NFL for ESPN and spent seven years playing corner in the league, on this episode of The Money Down, a special four-part miniseries from The Athletic Football Show focused on the business of the NFL.Host: Robert MaysWith: Domonique FoxworthExecutive Producer: Michael BellerProducer: Chris FlannerySubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTubeFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Domonique on X: @Foxworth24Theme song: HauntedWritten by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love SongsCourtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays, and I am very excited today to kick off a special series of shows here on the Athletic Football Show feed that will be coming your guys' way over the next month or so. This is The Money Down, four special episodes all focused on the business of the NFL. And that's a broad topic, and that was the intention as we decided which shows we wanted to hit in this series. We'll be talking about how the NFL was marketed, how it's broadcasted, how teams are built, and a lot more. We're starting the series off with a topic that I've been thinking about a lot recently. Over the past five years or so, we've had plenty of discussions about the markets for individual positions. The decline of running back salaries, the explosion of receiver contracts.

But one spot, I think, has been a bit overlooked in those conversations is the state of the cornerback market. Here's one stat for you. In 2016, five cornerbacks had an average annual salary that was at least 9% of the salary cap when the deal was signed. that same year, seven wide receivers also hit that figure, pretty even. Fast forward to 2024, and there are still only six cornerbacks making 9% of the cap. There are 21 receivers. So while the wide receiver market is boomed, the cornerback market has stagnated. Seems counterintuitive, right?

If past catchers are more valuable, why have the guys covering them become less valuable? And to take it a step further, why is cornerback a position that was home to guys like Dionne, Sanders in terms like Revis Island, faded from the superstar spotlight as receivers and other positions have become the faces of the sport. To help me explore all of this, we chatted with Dominique Foxworth from ESPN, a former NFL cornerback himself, who idolized Dionne and played across a transcendent cornerback in Shant Bailey. Dominique was involved in the NFLPA when he was a player and he's just such a thoughtful voice on a topic like this. We talked about the theories for why cornerback contracts have stalled, what it may take to reverse that trend,

and where the position sits in our broader football culture. Let's get to it. Joining us now from ESPN, the person I really wanted to have this conversation with because I felt like he would bring some interesting perspective to it in a few different ways. It's Dominic Foxwork. Dominic, how you doing, man? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. Excited to dig into this with you. When we were thinking about how we wanted to approach some of the topics in this series of shows, I kept coming back to cornerbacks in general because we've had a lot of discussions about positional value over the last four or five, six years. And so much of it has been rooted in running backs compared to other positions around the league. And I think that the stagnation of the cornerback market and just where cornerbacks sit, both financially and as a part of larger football culture, is just something that we haven't spent as much time thinking about. But I also think that the trajectory of that position is notable compared to what we used to think about it and kind of the prominence that it had and where things sit right now.

So I want to just ask you a pretty basic question to start this off. you come into the league in the mid-2000s. And in a lot of ways, I feel like the height of cornerback prominence in the league was right around like 2007, 2008, 2009. Champ Bailey is a fantastic player in Denver. You have Dorel Rivas comes in. That 2009 Jets team kind of dominates the conversation in a way that defenses kind of don't anymore.

So how would you describe what the kind of culture around the position was when you were in the league like 15 years? ago. Well, first of all, congratulations. Riley Moss and Cooper DeGine, like, you've made it. Welcome to the most underappreciated position in football. I think that's an interesting question because the being, it's very difficult, I guess, to explain a culture that it's the only one that you know and that's the only one that you have, but like the value of a cornerback, the like archetype of modern NFL cornerbacks,

or at least during that time of NFL cornerbacks, was Dion Sanders. Yeah. And that was it. And it kind of feels like the godfather of like NFL coolness in general. Like people still high step in the end zone and all that stuff feels like Dion Sanders. And like the attitude of cornerbacks being somewhat different in that we don't tackle. or like we're here to do a different. And that's all part of the culture, I think, of cornerbacks,

which isn't accurate necessarily because, like, I play with champ and we tackle. The nickelback is essentially a linebacker position played by the cornerback. And we tackle. You see Jalen Ramsey, he tackles. Like, this is something that's like a misnomer, but like the pretty boy cornerback was always meant to be like the opposite of a receiver, which I do think the receiver falls more into that category, despite the fact that I played against the likes of, like, Heinz Ward,

who, I mean, he was a tackle that could catch, like, from attitude and physicality. But I think the cornerback, in part because you guard the receivers, but also in part because it fit in an archetype that didn't exist on defense, like we always kind of fell into that category. And what came along with that was a bit of press, and importance and differentness that I think has always been a part of the position. And I used to joke with my friends is like if you saw a picture of guys away from the team,

like going out or whatever, you can always tell who the cornerbacks are. Because even relative to receivers, the cornerbacks are going to go a little bit beyond, just to be a little bit more extra. Like, they have one extra chain. Like, it's just something just there. Back in those days, their clothes would be just a little baggier and more expensive than everyone else's. So I think that speaks to the cornerback stuff, or at least the culture of being a cornerback. And that's really unique in football that different position groups can kind of have different cultures,

whereas other sports and everybody feels like there's like a culture for the league or for the court. Whereas within football, like, there's a distinct lineman culture, offensive lineman culture, distinct defensive lineman culture. And the cornerback culture is just like a culture of coal, I feel like. I'm 100% with you on this. And this, I haven't really thought about it in these terms, but it makes sense. How much of this is Dian? Like, how much of the way, it's all Dian. So you feel like the trajectory of this and the last like two and a half decades are dictated by this one person still? I think that there are

course defining moments. And so I think one of those was Dion Sanders or the most significant one of that. And like, to be fair, that's when I was a kid. So maybe I don't know what cornerbacks were like before then. But, and we didn't know, I think obviously the access to media and access to players and all that stuff was very different. Back then, we have a lot more access to understand what players are like.

But it did feel like Dion, it's hard to argue, that Dion was such a unique force and player that everyone coming up wanted to be like him. And I think it bled outside of the position. But if you were going to be a cornerback, you had to have something to you. And I think part of, it's one of the places where the Dion Sanders bravado and ego and confidence and cockiness. like that shield, it feels necessary. You know, it feels like you have to have that. And if you don't, you better pretend because you can't allow people to see or even, it's not even about allowing people to see it as much as you can't allow yourself to

feel like, oh, I'm not good enough. They're going to catch balls. They're going to score touchdowns unless your champ Bailey for that one year or Dorel Rivas for that one year where I was opposite champ. It was my first year with the Broncos when he had that season where I think he was only targeted like 50 times and had like nine interceptions and somehow didn't get defensive player to year. How do you feel about that? I feel that it was the most amazing thing I ever experienced watching it happen. And also, I don't know why they threw it over there 50 times.

I got a third round rookie on the other side that you could come come get out. after and they, uh, they did for sure. And I bawled out, but that's neither here to there, not nearly as well as champ. I want to revisit the cultural stuff, but I also kind of want to set the table for where we are, which is the market for the position and how it's arrived here. So just a couple of data points about the stagnation that we've seen. A couple contracts signed literally this offseason. Jaylon Johnson signs a deal after getting the franchise tag that is for $19 million a year,

which is less in AAV than the franchise. tag would have been. That's almost unheard of. When you're a franchise player, you're almost always going to get a bump on that number when you sign an extension. A couple of the other cornerback extensions signed this offseason. Patrick Sertan and Jalen Ramsey reset the market, right? So we got a bump for the first time in a while. But if you look at the numbers on those deals, they're actually a smaller percentage of the cap than what guys like Marshawn, Latimore, and Jaya Alexander were getting a couple years ago. And these extensions came two full years after that Jaya year deal.

Looking at this historically, it's actually kind of stark. So I want to compare it to the wide receiver market just because I think it's analogous and it gives sort of a mere image on offense and defense. In 2016, and the reason why 2016 is important, if you look at contracts in like 2012-ish, you still have the deals for Larry Fitzgerald and Calvin Johnson bumping up the market. And they got paid so much because they were drafted in the previous CBA as top five picks. So it kind of throws everything out of whack. So if you get a little bit further into the second to last CBA in like 2016,

five corners were making 9% of the salary cap. Seven receivers were making 9% of the salary cap. So it's pretty similar. If you go to 2024 right now, there are still six cornerbacks making 9% of the salary cap. It's right in line with what it was. There are 21 receivers who are making that level of the cap. And it's not just wide receiver.

You can do this a lot of other positions. In 2016, two tackles are making, 9% of the cap. Now it's 10. Eight edges. Now it's 12. Five defensive tackles like corner. Now it's 12. So double the amount of corners who are doing it now. In 2016, there were no guards that made even 8%. Now it's 7. So every other position essentially, except for running back and cornerback, has seen massive gains over the last eight seasons or so. And I just don't think people consider that enough when they think about the lines on these graphs because so much of the oxygen has been taken up by what has happened to running back specifically. Right.

And the market makes sense for what happened to the running back. I'm not sure that the market makes sense for what happened to the cornerback. The, particularly if the receivers are still going up, you would assume that that means that the cornerback is gone, would compete with it. So if there are guys that this isn't the core of my question here because it's tangled. Yeah, I'm trying to make sense of it and try to find some logic behind it. But if there, you would argue, I guess the only logic that I could come up with is the volatility of the position.

Yes. It's not worth it because even the best corners, like there's no such thing as a true shut down. Like no one catches anything on this side of field. corner. And so maybe that's why it's like investing that much in a player that even the best version of them is going like we see right now, uh, sauce is having a rough year. Like that just doesn't happen for any other position. I, I can't think of where you just like all of a sudden just have a bad year. Cornerback's the only place. So maybe that's the argument or maybe that's the, the rationale is the money is more, or the, or the.

results for your money is more certain in other positions? I think that's absolutely part of it. And I honestly think that's more part of it unlike the agent analysis side than it is even on the team side. I think that there are teams that are forward thinking and a little bit more proactive that are considering it that way. But I remember specifically asking a GM this summer about that. It's like, is this a matter of volatility, aging curves,

just some of the factors involved with the position that don't apply to other positions. And he kind of chuckled and he was just like, I love that you think that teams are thinking that way. It's not that complicated. Like, I'm sure that's some of it, but there are probably a lot of other things in play. And I want to actually talk about, because I asked a bunch of people and several executives this week about it. And there was a few different answers. And a couple of them were structural in just the way the game has changed over the last couple decades. And this is something else I thought you'd be able to shine a decent light on. Right. So in 2009, okay, we have 36% 11 personnel in the NFL, 36%.

We're talking 25-ish percent, 21 personnel. The fullback is a real part of NFL offenses back then. And just think about, all right, if you're in 21 personnel with two backs and two receivers, you got one receiver aside. And most of the time, your best receiver is your ex-receiver outside the numbers. You know where that guy's going to line up. The game has changed so much in the last 15 years in a seismic way that I don't think we consider enough. If you go back and watch a football game from 2009 on YouTube, it feels the same, right?

Like I remember those games, but just how different offenses are built now, we went from 36% 11 to 61% now. And so it just feels like the basis of the passing game. And the fact that you have fourish receivers now when you consider some of these tight ends, have we gotten to a place where even if there's more passing in the league, the way that the game is structured actually makes one single cornerback less valuable? Do you think that's fair? I think that probably makes more sense than anything I came up with off the top of my head is like the, I would wonder if you had taken the step to look into how much is spent per position group

and to see if that's changed also because I'm imagining that Nichols in general, the money has gone up for Nichols because back in my day, nickel only came out on third down. and if you are up by a bunch, you know, and now nickel is the base formation. So I'm guessing that the amount of money allocated to the cornerback position and the, like, probably the draft capital is probably another good way to measure how teams think about this position. The amount of picks expended on cornerbacks and the high portion of the draft, I would guess,

has gone up. So the, it's more that it seems. like you need because the offenses are so adept at finding specific acute points to attack that you're better off spreading your contract money around, then you are with trying to go and get two really good corners. I think that makes a lot of sense. And I think that we've seen teams do that for a bunch of different reasons. And this idea of secondaries is a weak link system where it's more important to have five guys

you can rely on than one single star, like the offensive line. I think there's some credence to that thinking. And part of it I also think is just the shift we've seen schematically over the last even like five or so years. The fact that we're seeing so much less man coverage and there's so much more shell coverage in general, you can hide corners in ways that you couldn't when the game was a little bit different. And so I think that part of it where if you just have a physical smart, tough guy, you

can live with him at corner in a way you might not have been able to when we lived in more of a single high place. You can live with them at corner as long as you have a defensive front that you can trust. And so, like, I think of the chiefs come to mind, whereas, like, they don't pay Sneed. And that was predictable if you look at their team. They obviously, McDuffie is important to them, but it's not, McDuffey's importance isn't because he's a corner, although he's a very good one. His importance is his flexibility.

And you watch the way that they, the. Chiefs play now. They want to be in a lot of too high. They want to play Palms a lot, which is like intelligence from the corner backs position. Explain Palms a little bit for an audience who doesn't understand it. Yeah, Palms is a too high coverage that can convert to four, cover four or cover two based on what the offense does. So generally, if you're the outside corner, you'll be reading the number two

receiver, so the slot receiver. If he goes vertical, then it turns in the four and you got to run vertical with the number one receiver. If he latens out and goes in or out, and probably, I'm assuming they say under five or seven somewhere around there, then you squat down and play covered two. And so that is more about reading. It's not as dependent. You're not as dependent on like the superhuman athleticism that you would need to play man coverage all game. You have, it limits your responsibility. So I think in general, the way that I like to think about defense and not just defense,

football in general is by position groups and how much stress a position group can take. And that's kind of how you have to build your defense. So if you've got a great defensive line, that means you're not going to blitz a lot, which means that you can put stress on them and put resources elsewhere, which is like the birth of Tampa 2. It's like, hey, we're going to play some zone coverage. Corners don't got to be great. The nickel got to be smart but not great.

The safeties don't have to be great. You got to be physical and try to cover a lot of ground. But nobody really got to be great because our four up front are going to destroy you. And that's like the same thing with the cover three with the Seahawks. And then they also had a great secondary, which is why that defense was absurd. So there are, I think the Broncos are the first example that comes in mind in modern football where there are a team that feels like their strength is their secondary. And they're going to take pressure off of everyone else by putting them in man coverage. It was like, all right, you need help getting pressure.

We can blitz because we can play man. We need to stop the run. We can load the box because I'm not scared to leave Moss and Sartan and McMillan in man coverage for a large portion of the game. Yeah, it's interesting. I honestly feel like when you look at. over the last decade or so. And maybe this is just the way that the branding of it happened.

We've actually talked about units of corners more than we've talked about individual corners. You had the no-fly zone in Denver in 2015. You had the Legion of Boom. And Richard Sherman's an outsized personality, and I do want to talk about that. But we've almost talked about them collectively more than we've talked about them individually

in the air time that these guys get. Yeah, no, I mean, because it's to the point that we made earlier. I think we do the same thing with it. It's funny because me and Mike Golick Jr. laugh about this sometimes because the opposite of a cornerback is not a receiver. It's an offensive lineman. It's the, and I know culturally you can't get further away from each other.

Like that is the most white Midwest position that you can think of is offensive line in all of football. and cornerback is the blackest position in any way that you could think of in all of football. Again, shout out to you and Riley Moss and Cooper DeGine being pioneers. But it's funny because those, I was getting to that point because it's, it is a unit-based system because we're going to attack the weak link. On the O line, your O line is only as good as the weakest portion of it is. And you need to build a strong O line. the same thing is true of a secondary.

And it's not just because they'll attack the weakest link, but it's because your job gets a lot harder if you as, so like if champ is the example, if I was completely terrible and any of the other cornerbacks that he played opposite of was completely terrible to the point where the safety had to roll over and double whoever I was guarding. Champ's going to have a hard time.

And he, if anybody could do it, he probably could have done it. I'm nowhere near what he was as a player, but I was good enough that, that I, that it didn't distort the defense. And that's the same sort of thing with O-Line players. Like, we got to slide to you every time. We got to put a tight end on your side every time that makes everyone else's job easier. So yeah, cornerbacks and O. Lyman, Twinsos. All right, before we move on, we're going to take a quick break here. I want to ask you just one more thing about that Chant Bailey era and just how defense is played back then. So I'd ask you, this question. When you guys were on those teams together,

those four or five years, who would you say it was like the prototypical ex-receiver that you guys had to worry about defending? Andy. Andre John, okay, Randy's a perfect example, right? So a guy like that, what could the defensive game plan look like back then when you had Champ Bailey in dealing with the Randy Moss? Because you just say, hey, we know you're going to be outside every single time. You're just going to follow him for the entire game? We could, but we didn't.

Okay. That wasn't what we did. I never understand it to this day. but we didn't. But theoretically you could have because you knew where he was going to be lining up for the most part. Yeah, I mean, they were, it was, he was in Oakland at that point. They would just run eye formation and he would like, he would run goes and outs. And that was pretty much it out of eye formation. And the funny thing is when I was in Denver and we played Randy a couple times a year,

champ never followed him. I signed my deal in Baltimore. We play them when he's playing for Tom Brady, and I'm the number one corner in Baltimore. And guess what? They're like, hey, you follow Randy everywhere he goes. But, I mean, they also, what you wouldn't do, what we never did when we played him in Oakland was we never doubled him.

They just didn't figure out how to use him properly or what, and he wasn't playing well. So we never doubled him. We just play straight and it was like, all right, he's going to catch some, but it's not going to be enough to beat us. and Baltimore we did have some coverages where we would roll to Randy and I would get a break and we'd double them some and that would be helpful. But yeah, that's, that was kind of the, yeah, it was pretty straightforward. And Randy wasn't a guy that like, although I'm sure he could have, they didn't put him in a slot.

They didn't do a bunch of motions. They didn't do it. They just lined his big fast ass up and say, run. And I essentially, like, anytime I played against Randy Moss, as ridiculous as it sounds, was like, look, you can have anything 15 and under. You're not making the highlight on me. You're going to have to have five to eight catches to get 100 yards. You're not going three for 97 with two tugs. Like, I was just getting back.

And that was the strategy. And I think the idea of him not lining up in the slot that often, that to me, feels like one of the biggest differences. one of the limitations of this. And you look at the way, go look at Jamar Chase's route tree from the game that they just played against the Ravens. Look at what he's doing. Look at where he's lining up. And that's not an outwire.

That's become the norm where you have these guys that, you know, Chase has played in the slot more in 2024 than he ever has in his entire career. And I think that's because offenses have come to understand. That's necessary. Like we have to make sure that we're creating matchups with our best receiver. And let's think about like the four top highest paid guys for the best receivers in the league right now. Chase, Jefferson, CD Lamb, Tyreek Hill. We're talking like 35-ish 40% with those guys lining up inside. And that's before you even start thinking about condensed splits.

I was rewatching a Patrick Sartan game from earlier the season when they were playing against the Raiders today. Just be like, right, how much is he following guys and what does his usage actually look like? And Jacobi Myers catches like a big dig at one point in the game. And it's because he's lined up in a cut split and Stratan is having to follow him across the entire field. Even if you're the best corner in the league, the ask and the demands that modern offenses are putting on you are just a little bit different when the game was a little bit more static and a little bit more vertical. And I think that has to play into some of this. It has to a lot. And I think so a bunch of things popped into my mind.

I'll start with the most interesting. It's probably smart. imagining like preparing for games and watching film get ready for games there's variables that you want to use to try to narrow down what you're going to have to guard before the snap so like down and distance field position and previous route tree or previous routes run by this particular person also alignment like where they're they are on the field relative to the hash or relative to the numbers relative to the sideline. Formation. All these things are the things that I'm watching and narrowing down. And then I get to the field. And all right, it's third and six, this portion of the field.

They're in this formation. I know they like one of these things. I'm going to try to make a play. Because be honest with you, to be a corner to make plays, you kind of got a guess sometimes. Or make an educated guess because a good quarterback. and a good receiver, they're going to get open.

The question is, is the ball going to be accurate enough? Like, they're not going to get completely away from you. So imagine preparing for Jamar Chase, if you're going to follow him everywhere. It's like, there's,

you don't have the brain power to get that done. It's like, all right, if he's in the slot in its third down, in this form, oh, shit, he's motioning. Oh, he motions. Like, you just, and then you're, you're like reduced to, all right, well, I'll just play him straight up. Okay, good luck.

Don't guess on Jamar. Play him straight up. See what happens. It's just hard. And you might be better off. Just like, everyone's staying your spot. And you study what happens when, when Jamar Chase is right here. You study what happens when he's over there and you over there.

And when he's over here, this is when they like to go deep. So we're going to roll the safety whenever he's there. and that all sounds fine and good. And like that's the best decision to make. But then there are other people on the team. So you've spent all this time and energy game planning for this, particularly when T. Higgins is around. I was like, oh, God, damn.

And it's just stressful. It's tough. The way that you're talking about this and the terms you're talking about it and I think are so telling because we're talking about one guy dictating so much of what you're doing on defense. The one guy, the one Jamar. chase impacts five guys on defense and impacts seven guys on defense. And so I think that's part of this is that just structurally one receiver can dictate the way an NFL game is going to go

in a way that one cornerback just can't anymore for all these environmental factors. And I do think that explains some of the gap that we've started to see. Yeah. And those factors are that the emphasis on the passing game, the changing in the rules to like, I think we pretend like the rules are not biased against defensive backs, but... It's a huge point to bring up. Again, that's like 15 years ago, right? Is when that starts happening. It's hugely important.

No, I've talked about this before, how the rules changed on us while we were in the league. And, like, the back shoulder fade, like, became in vogue while I was in the league or just before I got there. And it's like, oh, shit, now I got to cover of fade that goes deep in a fade that's thrown behind me. And then the, like, contact rules started to change and it made it more difficult. Then the hits over the middle and, like, defenseless receiver, all that stuff started to change. And the tools that we had that made it closer to fail, fair.

And not to mention that pass interference doesn't really exist. Like, I know we say it does, but it doesn't really exist for the offense. Every week you watch people push off and I've come to accept that that's a thing, but the level of contact that's allowed for the receivers is not the same that it is for the deep. of facts. All that being said is they've made it, if there was a cornerback who could completely lock someone down, they've made it so hard for them to do it that the value may not be there.

And we'll catch up, we'll figure it out, we'll correct the code, develop new techniques and strategies, we'll do it. And then they'll change the rules on us again. The rule changes have to be mentioned, right? It's really important just in terms of how the game is played. But again, those answers, that we'll change, we'll figure it out. Those are structural. Those are like, all right, these are how we have to position guys,

not how one player can dictate it. And so I think that's important. I mean, they are right now. Yeah. Until, so like it takes time. And I think like the body type of football players based on their position changes because different things are needed. And you...

their corners will figure it out. It may not be, and I think they did. They have figured it out in different times, but they'll figure it out and then they'll change the rules again, which I've probably like five years ago, I batted around right in a piece on cornerback being the blackest position in football, and not just because it was literally the blackest position in football,

but because I also felt that there was analogs between the idea of trying to get ahead and up, change the rules on you again. And also, no one really wants you to succeed. Like, you play cornerback. No one's ever happy about a six three game with four interceptions. It just, eh, it was going to be a good piece. But then I got lazy and started doing TV. I totally understand that.

I understand that exact trajectory, actually. These are all environmental factors that I think are really, really important. And I think that without the environmental factors, we wouldn't see the path that we've seen over the last 10 or 15 years. But one of the other things that when I was kind of soliciting opinions about this, about why the stagnation has happened in the market, was telling. And I asked one executive yesterday, and his response I thought was so telling, considering the conversation I knew we were going to have.

And he said, superstars change markets and we haven't had any superstar corners. And I wonder how true you think that is. Like when you consider all the true superstar receivers, we've seen in the league. We're recording this the day after Jamar Chase did what he did. Do you feel like there is a dearth of super talented cornerbacks right now compared to what we see at some other positions? So, I mean, I guess it depends on how you define it.

So, like, if you say that there are going to be superstars in every position, they're just the best players in that position. Then, of course, there are superstar cornerbacks. But I think what, when we talk about superstars, at least I'm trying to define it as we speak. I think there are two ways to define it. it. I think that there's a production way of defining it. And I think there's a cultural way of defining it. And I kind of want to talk about both of those things.

Yeah, I think in the cultural way of defining it is often connected to the production. But even within the production way of defining it, I think that the way that I would define like an on-field superstar is someone whom you can build a scheme around. So like if there's a receiver so good that he requires the defense to contort themselves to cover him, then he's a superstar. And a running back so good that he requires a defense to bend their rules in order to like Christian McCaffrey comes to mind, where you see zones will distort themselves and create ridiculous separation numbers because the linebackers won't drop back.

They'll squeeze to Christian McCaffrey. And, like, it distorts the entire defense. I think that's probably true in that, and this is all connected stuff we were talking about. I don't think that we got a corner in the league. Like, we have corners who can have shut down games. But we don't have a corner in the league that's inevitable as some of the pass rushers that we have. Or receivers. Yeah.

Or receivers is. is obvious, yeah. And I was thinking about Miles Garrett or... You know what Miles Garrett is. Every single game, you know what Miles Garrett is. And that certainty among all past rushing positions, I think is really, really important to point out. Right.

And I think it raises the level of the defense. And everyone on the defense gets a little better because Miles Garrett is out there. I'm not sure that the best corners that we have seem like they are also, they're more dependent than they are, then the team is dependent on them. Because they feel like they're more dependent

on the, the team, if that makes sense. It does. It does. And I think that the two guys that come to mind here, because these are the two guys that everyone was mentioning when they were talking about how the market could get pushed forward. And it was Sertan and Soss Gardner. And Sartan gets the deal that he got, like we mentioned at the top. It does a little bit, but it's not some huge,

jump forward. And sauce is somebody that I talked to a lot, there's a couple of people about this week, just in how he could potentially shift some of this. Because I do think among corners in the NFL, even if people think Sartan is the best one. Sauce is probably the biggest name, right? Like, he's the most famous. His name is sauce and he plays in New York. Like, you talk about the guys like an extra chain, like that's Soss Bardoner. And I think that's good. I love that and I want that for the position. But a lot of people, a lot of people strong, there are people who think that he's not a product of the way the Jets play, but he is helped by the way that the Jets play. He's not this guy who's going to be following the best receiver and man coverage the entire

game. Sertan now in this defense, which an opposing coach brought up to me this week, he's like, now that the Broncos play like this, this is the best, most valuable version of this guy. Now we're truly seeing what he can provide a defense in a way that you can't when you're playing in sort of a fan geo system. But that's still a pretty small pool of guys. And you're putting a lot on like one or one. or two players, and it's really just one player that can kind of transcend these structural things

that we're talking about here. The guy that I would say is probably in this conversation. You're talking about how you can build a defense. It would have been Jalen Ramsey, right, like four or five years ago. And I think part of this and something I didn't really start thinking about until I started looking at some of the numbers, it's important to have talent behind you to raise the level of the market. And I think that something I've never really thought about or talked about, You look back at like six, seven years ago what the cornerback market looked like. There were two corners in 2018 that were making 9% of the cap. And it was kind of in this post-Richard Sherman Legion of Boom world,

where the highest paid guys at the position were like Josh Norman, Tramaine Johnson, Xavier Rhodes, Desmond Troufant, AJ Boyer when he got that deal from Jacksonville. Those are good players. But then you compare it to the receivers who were resetting the market at that time. AJ Green, Julio, Des Bryant, Demarius, Thomas. They were all pushing the market forward together at receiver. Remember they all got paid like in the same week during that one stretch?

And so that, because there are so many good ones, the market gets pushed forward. That wasn't happening for corners in like 2017, 2018. So when it came time for Jalen Ramsey to get paid, he was working off of a smaller number than those receivers were because his peers, three, four years earlier, weren't at the same. same level of some of these other positions. I've just never really thought about it in those terms before, but it does matter. It matters. And I think what also matters is the, and this kind of relates to the changing trajectory like we talked about with Dion Sanders' existence is we fail to talk about, and sorry for

the like science analogy, but like, I think we failed to appreciate how closed and insulated the ecosystem of the NFL is. And if you think about like evolution and a broader true like free market ecosystem is you kind of react and respond to the stimulus that's around you and those things become important and valuable. But when there's only 32 teams and you can't get relegated, you can't get promoted, and you all make money and the draft happens and there's a salary cap, there's little incentive, I think, to buck the status quo.

And I also think if there happens to be, for whatever reason, there's just a dearth of talent at the position or the rule changes deemphasize the position, it changes the way that the sport evolves. And I think what you're pointing to is something that impacted the money on one way, but it could also, like, impact the way that the, the next generation of coaches think about football and the way that you go about constructing a team, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy where it's like, all right, if we don't have good corners so we have to organize coverages and defenses to protect those corners, then that's

the way that we're going to go. And even if there are some corners who arise that have the talent to live that way, I don't coach that way. Yeah, it only perpetuates it. Yeah, I'm a Tampa 2 guy. I need physical guys who are, yeah, who are comfortable in here. I don't need guys who, and like the cover three thing, took over the league, which like obviously Richard Sherman's one of the best corners ever.

But Richard Sherman is not going to wow you with his combine numbers, and he's not the type of guy that you put in man coverage and shut people down. And so that defense became so in vogue. And then it's like, all right, so why would I pay? pay ridiculous amount of money for this guy who is imitation of Richard Sherman, who's not even as good. Like Richard Sherman, you could argue is worth that money no matter what system he's in. But no one else is creating those plays. I think this is so telling.

And I think this is so important to consider the fact that what we're looking for at the spot and literally the way that defenses are structured can perpetuate a devaluation in some of these positions. So I ask you, do you think if we look at around the league and we really do think we only have maybe like one and a half shut. down corners. Do you think that the sport and the development at younger levels and just the way the game has played has made us worse at developing corners? Or do you think the sport and the way that it's played and developed has made us worse at developing cornerbacks? Or do you think just the structure of football in general, especially at the NFL level, that's the main driver of the devaluation? I think that the proliferation of passing in seven on sevens and flag football, You're looking at the head coach of a championship flag football team, by the way.

11-year-olds, we are bawling. But I think that enhances the – it should lead to better cornerback play because you get more of it. But I will say this. You know what I honestly think is – I think my best season as a pro was with the Atlanta Falcons. And that was because I had Emmett Thomas a dedicated – He's a Hall of Fame cornerback, and he was a dedicated cornerbacks coach. It was the first time in my career that I had a cornerbacks coach. Every other time I had a-

How deep of your career was that? That was my fourth season. When I was in college, our DB coach was also the defensive coordinator. He did not coach our technique. And same thing in Denver. We had a safety's coach and we had a DB's coach. The DB coach eventually became the D-Corpsator, but we didn't have a dedicated cornerbacks coach.

Then in Atlanta, I had that in Baltimore, we didn't. We had a safeties coach, DB coach. The DB coach, Chuck Pagano eventually became the defensive coordinator also. And I think that it's a position that doesn't get, even though it's like the offensive line, we highly value O line coaches, right? The most valuable position coaches in the NFL. Right. And the difference of an O line, and the thing is, I think that safety and corner are very different positions.

O line, it's not really like everybody doing the same shit, just in different places. And I think that generally people don't understand or appreciate how important it is to have someone dedicated to coaching the technique. And if we didn't have it at Maryland, I'm sure that lots of other schools didn't have dedicated cornerbacks coaches. And I'm sure that high schools don't have dedicated cornerbacks coaches. cornerback coaches. And even if you did, they don't know the damn technique. They don't know the techniques. They're just like, cover this guy. And I think more than anything, that's the, even in Baltimore, we had a dedicated kickers coach that would come in. He was actually the mayor. He was the mayor of a small town in Maryland. And he would come in a couple

times a week and work with the kickers. And we didn't have a dedicated cornerbacks coach. And I think that's what it comes down to is people just think a secondary is secondary. Corner is not safety. And nickel is not safety. No one's working on those things. And I feel like we talk about this all the time with

offensive line, how it's a learned position, right? Like the movements playing offensive line moving backwards in that way. It's not natural. And the same is true for corner. But I don't think we talk about the abdication of duty when it comes to quarterback development

in the same way that people have talked about it with the crisis that's been happening with offensive linemen over the last decade. And we probably should. I think we solved it. We just solved it all right now. Like, I don't know who else is in this series, but one, even if I was terrible,

I would have said I won because I'm a quarterback, cornerback, but I'm pretty sure I won. Like, this is the best interview. It has to be, right? Say it. It absolutely is. I'm sure it will be. Yeah, cool, cool, cool.

Oh, ahead of time. You haven't done them all yet, huh? No, we have a couple more to go, but I feel confident about this one. Before we get to more with Dominique, let's take one more quick break. The last thing I wanted to ask you is you talk about coaching 11-year-olds. This is a weird thing to say. I don't interact with a lot of children in my life. Like, my niece is a year old.

A lot of my friends' kids are very young. So I interact with a lot of young kids and adults. So I don't talk to a lot of 10, 11, 15-year-olds about football and about their football fandom. because I think that's where we should probably look when we think about how the modern era of stars is being developed in the NFL. So when you think about your kids and the way that they watch football, are cornerback star players to them in the same way that Justin Jefferson is? Well, my house is a little different. Yes, that's fair. That's a good point.

We have, I have one son and two daughters and we all have an appreciation for defense and cornerback specifically. I'm probably the wrong person to ask. Most households don't. But like on the team of my, we got like 16, 11 year olds across two teams. And they love, again, it speaks to the cornerbacks being at the forefront of cool. They love to do the seatbelt celebration. They love making a play. But they still want to play a game called Moss more than anything, which is just like three fly essentially.

Like, yeah, it's, if I ask them the name. three corners, I don't think they could. If I asked them to name three receivers, they'd probably get to 10. And this is 11-year-old boys. I think they could probably name the corners on the team that they like and Saus Gardner. And that would probably be it. So I do think that there probably is a dearth of superstars there.

But it's hard in this modern age where there's so many incredible highlights from all levels of football that look at goddamn Sequin Barkley backwards jumping over people. How am I supposed to make a PBU excited? Like a back down? Like the footwork? That's not the same as doing backwards and everybody's one hand spearing balls in the air. Like, yeah, that shit's cool. This is another parallel with offensive linemen.

It's like there aren't left tackle highlights. And so, but we don't think about offensive linemen as cool. so we don't think about losing those guys in this broader conversation. But with corners, I do think it's important, right? Like, just think about watching a football game in 2009 when the Jets were playing and all the Rivas Island metrics and the graphics and how often they would talk about that shit. That's gone. Like, that never will happen when you think about a broadcast about an NFL cornerback right now. It would just never happen.

We also don't get excited for matchups anymore. Like, I remember getting excited for Dion versus Jerry. I remember that. And Revis Moss. Yeah, those were exciting. Like, we don't do that anymore. We pretend to. We say that we want to see this matchup,

but no one actually locks him. No one gives a shit on that matchup. Yeah, we're just waiting for Jemar Chase to do something special. Yeah, and I think the highlight culture is a huge part of it, and just the way that people are consuming the game on social media now and the fact that you have highlights for skill position players in ways you don't, for corners. It's really only defensive linemen get them because of sacks.

And then the fantasy football part. aspect of this. Like just how many guys are only caring about their fantasy football team? They're only watching Red Zone and seeing those highlights. They only care about how their parley is going to go. So they're rooting for guys to, all right. When Jamar Chase gets over 78 yards, I won. So I love Jamar Chase.

I don't think there are any cornerback props. Or if there are, I think we have a certain level of degenerate that is betting those in a way. The general public is not with some of these receiver numbers. Yeah. Kids, get off our lawn. Go back to the all day. forget your fantasy football. Let's play some good hard-nosed football

with defensive backs, guys. Listen, my peanut Tillman experience growing up and the fact that he was the most exciting thing about Chicago football for a while, I've been raised in this. I know this world. Who would you say, and I'll kind of wrap things up here

because I'm just curious about when this shift happened. Who would you say is the last corner that really has had that level of prominence when you look at like the hierarchy of players in the league? I actually think that's probably a better question for you than it is for me. I mean, all the names that we mentioned started to come to mind. I think Daly Ramsey maybe. It's probably Ramsey, right?

Because Ramsey had that feel to him. He had the attitude and he had the impact. I think he's the guy holistically that I would probably say. But again, it was only like a three, four year stretch where he was that guy compared to his peers and just around the league. And when he went to L.A., he played everything. Like, he wasn't just a corner at that point. They got the most out of him. And that probably speaks to the devaluation of the position.

It was like, well, if we put him at corner, he's not going to impact the game nearly as much as if we also put him at nickel and the safety and lineback. Like, he played everything. And I think the challenge is going to be, again, going back to what that executive said to me, it's like superstar players and transcendent players move markets. Do you have that transcendent corner that's going to come along? And I just think that going back to the beginning of this conversation, there are so many structural. impetiments to that now, that I don't know who that guy is going to be and how they're going to break through. And I think that that's going to help impact what that market is going to

look like at the position for a while now. Yeah. It's a cycle, which is going to impact whether that's a position that kids want to play. We'll revisit this conversation in 10 years when your kids are 21. All right, man. See you there. Dominic Foxwood sincerely appreciate the time. I really, really enjoyed that. Probably appreciate it. Can I steal some listeners? Can I give a shout out to my podcast? You certainly can tell people where they can find what you're working on.

I mean, it's just the Dominic Foxworth Show, and everybody knows how to find shows now on YouTube and all the podcasts. I just wanted to say it. Like, they can figure it out. They're smart. All right, guys, that is all we've got. Thank you so much to Dominique for his time and his perspective. Really, really enjoyed that conversation.

Please check back here next week. For the next episode of The Money Down that will feature a conversation with our senior media columnist here at The Athletic, Andrew Marshand, about the future of NFL broadcasting. We will be back on Sunday night into Monday with me and Derek breaking down all things week 11. Until then, appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you soon.