by Aaron Schatz

On Wednesday, we took a look at the best cornerbacks of the season according to the FO game charting project. Today, we'll flip things around and look at the corners who rank at the bottom of the game charting stats. I've ranked all cornerbacks with at least 40 charted passes, which means 83 total cornerbacks. 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.

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.

In the discussion thread for Wednesday's article, someone asked me why I created a minimum of 40 passes when the best cornerbacks are often the guys that opponents won't throw at. This is the reason why. Even with a minimum of 40 passes, you can see the effect of small sample size, as four of the bottom five guys were near 40 passes. Of course, you'll have more of these guys at the bottom than you will at the top, because some of these players had fewer passes because teams pulled them out of the starting lineup. Fabian Washington is a good example, starting the first eight games for Baltimore and then mostly disappearing from the field because he was so horrible in the first half of the season.

This list also shows you just how ridiculous it was to send DeAngelo Hall to the Pro Bowl. Is he really the second- or third-worst starting cornerback in the league? No, his numbers were better than this in past seasons. But he's certainly not one of the best cornerbacks in the league, even after you consider all his interceptions.

The other thing we see on this list was the complete implosion of the Dallas secondary this season. There were some injury issues, but Mike Jenkins and Terence Newman were horrible all season. There have been reports this offseason that the Cowboys may cut Newman, but they can't really cut Jenkins, who is still young and was very good in 2009. They just need to figure out what the hell happened to him last year.

Jason Allen actually had his best season in 2010, especially after Miami released him and Houston picked him up. His high yards per pass figure comes from just a handful of plays, mostly by Braylon Edwards. For some reason, Allen was dominated by Edwards, who had receptions of 67, 42, and 27 yards against Allen in two games (one with Miami, one with Houston).

One last table:

Complete numbers, updated to account for plays with double coverage, will be in Football Outsiders Almanac 2011 this July (or whenever the owners and players decide to make nice).