Eagles Cover Corners: James Bradberry Ranks NFL’s Best; Where’s Darius Slay?

Eagles cornerback Bradberry will turn 30 at the end of summer but is still playing at a high level.

PHILADELPHIA – Darius Slay didn’t make the list. James Bradberry did, though.

Next Gen Stats released its top 10 coverage players in the NFL and the Philadelphia Eagles cornerback was at the very top of it. The list ranked players based on their 2022 season.

Behind Bradberry and rounding out the top five were New York Jets Sauce Gardner, Miami Dolphins Kader Kohou, Jacksonville Jaguars Tyson Campbell, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers (now Seattle Seahawks) Ryan Neal.

In order to qualify, per a story on NFL.com, players needed a minimum of 300 coverage snaps, 40 targets as the nearest defender, and a catch rate allowed below expectation (meaning they're consistently breaking up passes that were likely to be completions).

Also, qualifiers had to have a negative targeted expected points added (a metric used to quantify how much an individual player impacts an opponents' scoring potential and the most important metric used in this exercise), a tight-window percentage of at least 20 (15 for linebackers, due to the nature of their position as second-level run defenders and coverage defenders) and a maximum passer rating allowed of 80.

This is what Bradberry’s numbers looked like:

Passer rating allowed: 54.7

Catch rate allowed below expectation: -12.5%

Tight-window percentage: 29.4%

Target rate: 16.1%

Average separation: 2.3 yards

TARGETED EXPECTED POINTS ADDED: -32.8

Bradberry was a free agent after last season, in which he posted three interceptions, including a pick-6. He has 18 career interceptions.

The former cap casualty of the New York Giants, Bradberry signed a one-year deal in free agency last year and then parlayed that into a three-year contract this past offseason.

He admitted to a lot of anxiety after the Giants cut him.

“I was very anxious because I didn’t know what decision was going to be made,” he said last year after joining the Eagles.

“A lot of anxiety throughout that period, but I knew that by being patient, eventually, things were going to shake out and I was going to be in the right place.

Anxiety was replaced by uncertainty after his one-year deal with the Eagles expired.

“I wasn’t sure if I would be back, but I definitely wanted to come back,” he said this past May.

It definitely helped that he played cornerback for the league’s top-sacking defensive unit and has Slay on the other side, but Bradberry, who will turn 30 on Aug. 4, is still playing at a high level to the point that perhaps he lands on this list again following the 2023 season.

Ed Kracz covers the Philadelphia Eagles for SI's EaglesToday.

Please follow him and our Eagles coverage on Twitter at @kracze.

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