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This offseason I am taking a position-by-position look at the best NFL draft values of the millennium: In short, which teams received the most bang for their draft-pick buck?
Higher draft picks were not dismissed for this exercise, but I tended to side with the highest-achieving lower selections. Extra weight was also given to longevity and the value those players provided for the teams that drafted them.
Now, there’s a reason why cornerbacks are so highly sought after: Quality ones are hard to find. A scan of the past quarter century has shown an overwhelming lean toward early-round — and largely first-round — corners when we drill down to the best of the best at the position.
Still, there were enough non -first-rounders to compile a quality list of value selections, but it says something that I weighed them quite critically and thoroughly against a group of higher-drafted players.
Drafted: Round 5 (No. 154 overall), 2011.
In the running for one of the biggest draft steals ever at corner, Sherman is the most obvious candidate to head up the position in this exercise. He was a major sleeper coming out of Stanford, so much so that his former Cardinal coach (Jim Harbaugh, who had just taken the 49ers job in 2011) passed on him in the first four rounds of the draft.
As a converted receiver with only two years of college cornerbacking under his belt, Sherman entered the league with suspicion — but also with advantageous tools. His length, strength and ball skills all would help make Sherman a terrific member of the Seahawks’ “Legion of Boom” secondary that made two Super Bowls, winning one, and earned its chapter in league lore.
A member of the All-Decade Team for the 2010s, with five Pro Bowls and three first-team All-Pro mentions, Sherman ranks up there among the best corners of the past few decades. The fact that 33 defensive backs were drafted ahead of him — even in a loaded 2011 class — remains one of the wilder bits of draft arcana.
