by Aaron Schatz

The offseason is usually a slow time around Football Outsiders, but this offseason is particularly slow since we don't have any free agency to discuss (or free agent signing news stories to link to in Extra Points). Let's see if we can fill the next few weeks with some of the many numbers that we've collected over the course of the 2010 season.

One thing we haven't yet done this year is look at the full game charting numbers for cornerbacks in 2010. These tables rank all cornerbacks with at least 40 charted passes. (Interestingly, the number of cornerbacks who hit this minimum has gone up from 70 in 2009 to 83 in 2010.) I've removed passes marked as Hail Mary, Hit in Motion, Tipped at Line, or Thrown Away. I've also removed wide receiver screens, which aren't really a good way to measure cornerback coverage because a cornerback in man coverage is going to (or at least, is supposed to) immediately get blocked out of the play by another wide receiver. Right now I'm only looking at primary defenders, so this is not adjusted to account for double coverage, or plays where the charter marks a hole in zone but lists an appropriate zone defender in the second DEFENDER column. There are no opponent adjustments yet, and pass interference is not yet included.

Typical caveats apply, of course: This is imperfect data based on the game charting project, which means it comes off limited television camera angles. In past years, this data has been very inconsistent from year to year, and we're going to study that in the offseason to try to figure out if we can get more accurate numbers by, say, looking at players over two-year spans. (I wrote this last year as well, but this offseason we have, shall we say, "extra free time.")

Success Rate, to remind everyone, is the percentage of passes that don't manage to get at least 45 percent of needed yards on first down, 60 percent of needed yards on second down, or 100 percent of needed yards on third down.

This just in: Darrelle Revis continues to be awesome, recovering nicely from the hamstring issues he had early in the season. Antoine Winfield is also playing at a very high level despite being in his mid-30's, although his metrics are exceedingly strong in part because the mostly Cover-2 defense they play in Minnesota keeps him away from covering long passes. I discussed Stanford Routt's shockingly good numbers back when he signed his new contract a couple weeks ago. If you are surprised to see Brandon Carr on this top ten list rather than Brandon Flowers, I can tell you that Flowers ranked 12th in Success Rate. However, go read the AFC Wild Card game preview and scroll down halfway to a discussion of how Flowers' value was dramatically higher in the first three weeks of the season, and he didn't necessarily have the overall improvement that conventional wisdom says he had last year.

Interesting to note that the top cornerbacks in Success Rate are almost all near average or below when it comes to average YAC allowed. However, as you will see two tables down from here, the cornerbacks ranked 11th through 13th in Success Rate were all in the top 10 for fewest YAC allowed, so I don't know if this is truly meaningful.

In my opinion, the strangest name on these lists is Ron Bartell. Highly-drafted cornerbacks often take three or four years to develop, but Bartell was a second-round pick in 2005, so this was year six. We'll have to wait a year to see whether Bartell's improvement sticks, as there's a history of veteran cornerbacks randomly having excellent years. (Drayton Florence was near the top of these lists in 2009.) Do you like Javier Arenas' numbers? Yes, he was covering short-route slot receivers this year.

One more tidbit for today. Here are the stats for two top cornerbacks who did not have enough targets to be ranked above:

Player Charted

Targets Yd/Pass Success

Rate Avg. Pass

Distance YAC Nnamdi Asomugha 31 5.9 61% 15.4 3.7 Asante Samuel 36 3.2 78% 15.0 1.9

With four more pass targets, Samuel would rank as the top cornerback in both Success Rate and yards per pass. (He will in Football Outsiders Almanac 2011, since our ratings in the book generally waive the minimum for cornerbacks who had at least eight starts.)

Friday, I'll flip the script and run "10 worst" tables for cornerback charting stats.