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Free Agent CB Analysis

I've thrown together a quick statistical comparison of some potential free agent targets for the Eagles. This is mainly food for thought. There's definitely more to evaluating a player than looking at its stats, but these numbers are definitely interesting. All info is courtesty of Pro Football Focus. Also, sorry for the weak formatting.

Cox, Perrish (SF): Targeted on 9.9% of snaps, surrendered 8.6 yards per target, surrendered 0.86 yards per snap, allowed passer rating of 78.0 in his coverage. 5 INT, 8 passes defensed, 3 TDs allowed.

Cromartie, Antonio (ARZ): Targeted on 8.0% of snaps, surrendered 8.6 yards per target, surrendered 0.69 yards per snap, allowed passer rating of 80.3 in his coverage. 3 INT, 6 passes defensed, 2 TDs allowed.

Culliver, Chris (SF): Targeted on 8.7% of snaps, surrendered 6.4 yards per target, surrendered 0.56 yards per snap, allowed passer rating of 66.5 in his coverage. 4 INT, 6 passes defensed, 4 TDs allowed.

House, Davon (GB): Targeted on 11.4% of snaps, surrendered 5.6 yards per target, surrendered 0.64 yards per snap, allowed passer rating of 76.6 in his coverage. 1 INT, 8 passes defensed, 3 TDs allowed.

Maxwell, Byron (SEA): Targeted on 9.9% of snaps, surrendered 8.0 yards per target, surrendered 0.79 yards per snap, allowed passer rating of 81.1 in his coverage. 2 INT, 7 passes defensed, 1 TD allowed.

I would be curious to see how well stats like yard/target and yard/snap allowed correlate from season to season. I think overall, those are two very good measures of a corner's performance, along with the rate at which they are targeted. If you place any stock in these stats, as I do, it should lead you to question whether or not Byron Maxwell is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million a season. I would have loved to include Walter Thurmond III and Chris Cook in these ratings, but they did not log enough stats in 2014 to qualify. I think they would be worthwhile, cheap gambles in free agency for the Eagles.

For the record, I would venture to guess that the Eagles will stay away from Cox and Culliver due to their past off-the-field transgressions, but I think House could be a good alternative to Maxwell. Antonio Cromartie will likely only consider the Jets and Cardinals at this stage of his career due to his ties to the coaches there and his well-known love of New York. For kicks, I'll leave you with a look at how the Eagles' dynamic duo fared last year:

Fletcher, Bradley (PHI): Targeted on 10.5% of snaps, surrendered 9.3 yards per target, surrendered 0.98 yards per snap, allowed passer rating of 107.6 in his coverage. 1 INT, 18 passes defensed, 9 TDs allowed.

Williams, Cary (PHI): Targeted on 8.3% of snaps, surrendered 7.6 yards per target, surrendered 0.63 yards per snap, allowed passer rating of 89.5 in his coverage. 2 INT, 6 passes defensed, 5 TDs allowed.