Unveiling the NFL Draft’s Most Unstoppable Cornerbacks: Who Will Lock Down the Pass Game?

Ever wonder if a cornerback’s “burn rate allowed” really tells the whole tale about their ability to make plays? Or is it just a sneaky statistic hiding the nuances of lockdown coverage and instinctive brilliance? Trust me, it’s a bit of both — and that’s exactly what we’re unpacking as we zero in on the crème de la crème of the 2025 cornerback draft class. These guys aren’t your average athletes; they’re specialists who audaciously believe they can shadow NFL wide receivers whose skills evolve into something almost mythical each season. So, does a low burn rate signal a pure shutdown artist, or should we dig deeper into the tape to catch those moments where numbers can’t lie but can also mislead? We sift through stats, instincts, and sheer playmaking pizzazz to separate the signal from the noise just in time for the NFL Draft in Green Bay. Ready to meet the stickiest prospects who might redefine what it means to be a corner? Let’s dive in. LEARN MORE

Where does burn rate allowed tell an honest story about a cornerback’s playmaking ability, and where do we need a lot more information? We take a look.

Cornerback prospects in the NFL Draft are some of the most insane people in sports.

These young men not only believe they can play in the NFL, but they can backpedal and cover NFL wide receivers who each year seem to reach new heights of athleticism that the sport’s founders never could have dreamed about. 

You’d better be good then, and the 2025 cornerback class has a handful of good ones.

We’ve picked out the eight highest-ranked cornerbacks on the industry consensus big board, ranked them by 2024 burn rate allowed (the percentage of their targets on which the receiver they’re covering got open to position the offense for a successful play), and added context on their performances with playmaking ability, instincts and ball skills.

Where does burn rate tell an honest story about how good a cornerback was in college, and where do we need a lot more information? 

Let’s dive in heading toward this week’s 2025 NFL Draft in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

1. Jahdae Barron, Texas (35.5% burn rate allowed) 

Barron passes both the eye test and the Opta Analyst data test for a starting cornerback at the next level.

At Vanderbilt last season, he thumped his way through a game against the Commodores, closing quickly on passes in his direction and laying his body on whichever black jerseys he could find. It epitomized how none of the top cornerbacks in the draft class got burned less often than Barron in 2024.

(Click on the Jahdae Barron card to flip to the back)

Barron’s supporting tracking numbers were excellent, too: 7.0 burn yards allowed per target (compared to an average of 8.6 for the players on this list) and an 11.1% big play rate allowed, also the best among this cohort.

Barron put these numbers together against an SEC and College Football Playoff schedule, playing 401 snaps in coverage. That was 30 more than anyone else on our list – quite simply, production in bulk quantity. 

2. Travis Hunter, Colorado (37.8%) 

The two-way Heisman Trophy recipient wasn’t the clear-cut best receiver nor the clear-cut best cornerback in college football last season. But he was pretty close to both, and therein lies his genius.

The great strength of Hunter’s game as a wideout is his movement skills, and ability to high point the football and make people miss him, and his strength as a cornerback is the inverse: his extreme stickiness to the receivers he’s covering. Hunter let up just 1.1 burn yards per snap, among the lowest rates of any cornerback now in the draft, and posted a low burn rate despite mixing in his 316 coverage snaps with a full receiver workload. 

The most notable stat, though, is the one about how little Hunter worked. Opposing quarterbacks targeted him a mere 11.7% of the time on his coverage snaps, a much-lower rate than anyone else on this list and a stunningly low figure for any No. 1 corner in college football.

Don’t judge Hunter by what he did when the ball was thrown his way, but by how infrequently it was thrown his way in the first place.  

3. Shavon Revel Jr., East Carolina (39.1%) 

Revel’s 2024 season was cut short by an ACL tear in East Carolina’s third game. Two years ago, he led the Pirates in burn yards allowed per target (8.7%) and was a corner whom AAC quarterbacks tried hard to avoid regularly.

In limited action last year, Revel was usually sticky (hence the 39.1% burn rate and a by far-best-in-class 43.5% open rate allowed) but let up a 27% big play rate, one of the worst marks among the top cornerbacks in the class.

It’s worth noting that because of Revel’s early injury, we didn’t get to see him play football against anyone other than an FCS team, Norfolk State, and two mediocre Group of Five teams, Old Dominion and Appalachian State.

We’re working off a lot of projection here.  

4. Benjamin Morrison, Notre Dame (44.0%) 

Morrison allowed a 12.1% big play rate on his 25 defensive targets before an injury knocked him out in the sixth game of the season. He was the Irish’s No. 1 cornerback, and they gradually came to feel his absence acutely as a rotating cast of younger cornerbacks tried to stop star receivers during the team’s run to the national championship game.

The other Irish defensive backs were mostly up to the challenge, but a few receivers really torched Notre Dame’s rotating cast of corners after Morrison went out. USC’s Makai Lemon posted season highs of nine receptions and 133 receiving yards on Notre Dame in the regular season finale, and, most famously, Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith sealed the title game by catching a deep ball down the right sideline against sophomore Christian Gray.

That’s what happens when a legitimate No. 1 corner gets hurt. 

5. Trey Amos, Ole Miss (46.0%)

Amos was a three-stop college player, first playing a key role in three years at Louisiana, then stopping for a season at Alabama as a backup, and then exploding into a first-team All-SEC cornerback at Ole Miss.

He was a heavy lifter for the Rebels, playing more snaps (797) than anyone else and putting up quality numbers across the board. His 16 passes defensed tied for the high among power conference cornerbacks (the group included Barron).

6. Azareye’h Thomas, Florida State (47.1%) 

Thomas is a classic case of a player whom college football fans might miss completely, until they see his name come up early in the draft. He was a backup on Florida State’s undefeated (until an exhibition bowl game) 2023 team and didn’t get much of a look for the Seminoles until 2024, when FSU seemingly fell off the face of the earth.

While the Noles finished 2-10 with only one FBS victory, Thomas established himself as a serious NFL Draft prospect, allowing a stingy 13.2% big play rate on 34 targets and a best-on-this-list 0.9 burn yards per snap.

7. Maxwell Hairston, Kentucky (47.4%) 

Hairston made a breakthrough case at the NFL Scouting Combine. His 4.28-second 40-yard dash made him a buzzy prospect, and he now stands a great chance of being at worst a second-round pick.

Hairston’s numbers at Kentucky aren’t the reason for that status: He found himself getting hit up for big gainers more often than most of his peers on this list, with a 27.2% big play rate allowed and 10.9 burn yards allowed per target. Both of those are the worst among the eight consensus top cornerback prospects.

Hairston was hurt for a chunk of 2024, and it’s still not certain if he’ll play purely outside cornerback (where he lived at Kentucky) or if his 5-foot-11, 183-pound build leads to him working inside as an NFL player. 

8. Will Johnson, Michigan (50.0%) 

What’s Johnson doing all the way down here? Well, being injured. Johnson played just six games last year, the last in mid-October, and his medical status was often unknown to the world until right before kickoff.

Other than intercepting a pass and running it back for a touchdown to seal an angsty season-opening win against Fresno State, Johnson had a quiet, abbreviated season. He defended five passes and wasn’t the lockdown cornerback that Michigan expected coming off a national title season. 

It’s best to view all of that as an anomaly, though. Johnson was a star in the Wolverines’ 2023 title season, when he allowed a 41.0% burn rate and quarterbacks simply preferred not to throw to their No. 1 receivers if they were in Johnson’s vicinity.

He was targeted on just 14.9% of his coverage snaps that season when he lined up at his usual position of outside corner and didn’t allow any touchdown on a burn while posting eight passes defensed on a hilariously low 39 targets over the entire season.

Johnson is a star and the rare player whose last season in college should just be ignored by NFL Draft evaluators. 

For more coverage, follow us on social media on Instagram, Bluesky, Facebook and X.

The post NFL Draft Cornerback Rankings: Who Are the Stickiest Prospects in Pass Coverage? appeared first on Opta Analyst.