NFL Analysis
11/1/24
9 min read
2025 NFL Draft: Ranking Top-10 Cornerbacks
In today’s NFL, you can never have enough personnel on a few fronts. You can never have enough good pass rushers, and you can never have enough good cornerbacks.
The hoards of young college wide receivers who successfully make the leap to the pro level each year give offenses dangerous weapons to take advantage of a rulebook that puts offenses in the advantage more so than in years past. Slowing down the pass continues to be a challenge.
The 2025 cornerback class is here to help. This year’s crop in the secondary appears to be one of the strongest overall positions in the upcoming 2025 NFL Draft.
There are body types for all flavors of defensive play, offering a little something for everyone in the secondary. This group also has the distinction of being the only position group to carry multiple players with elite, top-10 overall grades in our early grading at The 33rd Team.
2025 NFL Draft Top 10 Quarterback Rankings
Early Top 10 2025 NFL Draft CB Rankings
WHAT AN INTERCEPTION BY TRAVIS HUNTER
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) September 28, 2024
He makes the play and hits the Heisman pose 🔥@CUBuffsFootball pic.twitter.com/cF3MLeOpuM
1. Travis Hunter, Colorado Buffaloes 
Travis Hunter is the personification of football instincts. Splitting his time equally between cornerback and wide receiver, he has forged multiple paths into the NFL and created what is effectively a “choose your own adventure” experience for his pre-draft process.
I selfishly hope he picks cornerback. Hunter’s transitional quickness, hip fluidity, and ball skills combine to create a blend that has a chance to be genuinely special if he's committed to playing cornerback.
Hunter’s film is littered with elite examples of spacing and leveraging multiple routes before illustrating surreal range at cornerback. Offenses often look to negate a top-tier cornerback by throwing around their coverage radius, and few corners have one bigger than Hunter.
Travis Hunter's Full Scouting Report
2. Will Johnson, Michigan Wolverines 
Will Johnson would, in many seasons, be considered the no-doubt candidate to be the CB1, and that very well may still be the case depending on Hunter’s decision on where to play. The No. 2 next to Johnson’s name should take nothing away from who he is, which is a lockdown cornerback.
Johnson has been mired by injury this season, taking some of the luster off of a phenomenal resume. But it sounds as though he’s teetering on the brink of a return, where he can hopefully remind everyone of his physicality, coverage instincts, and versatility as a scheme-transcendent talent.
Will Johnson's Full Scouting Report
Pick-6 for #ECU CB Shavon Revel Jr.
— Jordan Reid (@Jordan_Reid) September 14, 2024
If you’re looking for this years Quinyon Mitchell, he’s a worthy candidate. Came into the year as my CB4 and No. 25 overall player. 📈📈📈 pic.twitter.com/mWLJi70uGx
3. Shavon Revel Jr., East Carolina Pirates
It was a cruel twist of fate to see Shavon Revel Jr. seemingly turning up the heat on his NFL Draft resume earlier this season, just to have his year cut short after a little more than 200 snaps by a season-ending knee injury in practice.
Revel Jr. suffered an ACL tear in September, which will hopefully leave him ample wiggle room to get ready for a healthy return for the start of his rookie season in 2025.
If he’s healthy, look out. Holy smokes, his tape is fun.
Revel Jr. is every bit of 6-foot-3, providing elite length and supreme physicality at the position. He’s disruptive on route stems, has a huge area of influence at the catch point, and utilizes that physicality to be an effective striker in run support.
Corners who are willing and enthusiastic tacklers and run-support defenders get some added juice, thanks partly to every offensive coordinator’s plan to force corners to tackle on the perimeter in the run game on any given week.
Shavon Revel's Full Scouting Report
4. Jahdae Barron, Texas Longhorns
Barron’s career up until 2024 was predominantly as a nickel defender, where his 5-foot-11, 200-pound frame provided ample value to aid in run support. But Barron’s been charged with playing outside more in 2024, and this is further boosting his stock as one of the draft’s most position and role-flexible secondary defenders.
Barron’s NFL future is still probably best served as a nickel defender. He’s shown good zone coverage instincts, playing and leveraging multiple routes with space through the years.
However, it is nice to know that a team that desired to play matchups could, in theory, charge Barron with an assignment that left him outside and that he’s capable in this world. Barron enjoyed a productive showing in one of Texas’ biggest showcase games of the season just last month, posting two interceptions and an additional pass defensed against Carson Beck and the Georgia Bulldogs.
True freshman 4⭐️ CB Benjamin Morrison with the pick-six to all but put it away.
— 247Sports (@247Sports) November 6, 2022
The nation's longest winning streak is less than a quarter away from coming to an end.pic.twitter.com/88UERcNOnk
5. Benjamin Morrison, Notre Dame Fighting Irish
The top of this list has unfortunately been hammered by season-ending injuries. First, Revel Jr. and then Benjamin Morrison’s season-ending injury came shortly after that.
Morrison’s injury was suffered against Stanford and ultimately required hip surgery. The good news for Morrison is that his resume as a player is a well-developed one — this is a technician at the position.
He lacks Hunter's elite transitional quickness, Johnson's prototypical size, and Revel Jr.'s raw explosiveness. However, he has often compensated for being a sufficient-level athlete by playing with even-keeled feet and discipline in space. Morrison offers good coverage instincts in zone but lacks the physicality to play inside or consistently in press at the next level, making him the first scheme-specific outside corner on this list.
Benjamin Morrison's Full Scouting Report
6. Mansoor Delane, Virginia Tech Hokies
Delane is a fascinating player. He’s listed at 6-foot-1, 187 pounds. Still, he plays bigger than that.
Every so often, Delane will run into a bigger player who can actually use raw mass to win leverage and position over Delane, but more often than not, this is a cornerback who punches above his weight class and offers a ton of scrappiness to his play. He’s playing his best ball this season, too. Delane has been a lockdown coverage option on less than 45 percent of targets through the end of October.
His scrappiness is, of course, for better or worse when considering discipline on the route stem and ensuring his battle for positioning isn’t coming at the expense of excessive contact downfield. But Delane has generally walked the tightrope effectively thus far. He’s also a surefire tackler at the position, missing 10 percent of his career attempts across more than 1,500 defensive snaps throughout his Hokies career.
Mansoor Delane's Full Scouting Report
7. Tacario Davis, Arizona Wildcats 
Listed at 6-foot-4, 190 pounds, Davis is the kind of player who defensive back coaches will undoubtedly be eager to get their hands on. Big corners are all the rage these days, and Davis is a developmental press-man option who will be best playing in the face of opposing receivers.
He, as you’d expect with his stature, has elite length for the position and crowds the catch radius effectively from the trail position and when playing over the top and attacking underneath. Davis has enjoyed some of his better performances of the season against the better opposition on the schedule, too — he shined brightly against Utah despite more than a dozen targets and was stingy against Colorado last month.
Davis won't be for everyone. You don't want to leave him in space and ask him to trigger and react to the football by isolating his high hips. But if you’re willing to play aggressive man coverage and let Davis play press or inside the contact window, you’ll have a strong option at your disposal with ample room to grow.
8. Denzel Burke, Ohio State Buckeyes
Burke has been a long-tenured starter with the Buckeyes. He appeared to be on his way to consecutive strong seasons for Ohio State to close out his career—but then the Oregon game happened.
Burke struggled mightily against the Ducks, conceding receptions on every coverage assignment on which he was targeted. Players are allowed to have bad games, but the rest of Burke’s season is vital to alleviating the concerns that will stem from such a performance.
Burke has shown growth this year as a tackler and doubled his career interception total; he’s up to four. So there’s good on the resume, too.
However, he lacks the elite tools of some of his colleagues in this year’s class and is also now having troublesome regression on film. His finish and pre-draft process could potentially boost him back up into the top-6 in this year’s class, but as of right now, this prospect is losing steam.
Not one, but TWO pick-6️⃣s for Maxwell Hairston 😤
— ESPN College Football (@ESPNCFB) September 23, 2023
(📍 @NavyFederal) pic.twitter.com/UX3VKwIsf0
9. Maxwell Hairston, Kentucky Wildcats
Hairston has missed about half of the season due to the lingering effects of a shoulder injury. But “Mad Max” put some great tape on display in 2023 that is hard to forget.
I would imagine that when Hairston decides to declare for the draft as a junior or return, his injury will be a large factor. Five interceptions in 2023 paint the picture of a true ballhawk at the position—most of his interceptions have come by aggressively triggering out of his zone coverage responsibility to preemptively feel a quarterback’s decision unfold.
He’s got a gift in this regard, and it is one that deserves some love as a top-10-ranked corner, even if he hasn’t played in a month and a half.
10. Jabbar Muhammad, Oregon Ducks 
Muhammad has the resume of a modern transfer portal-era college player: three years at Oklahoma State, one year at Washington, and now one year at Oregon.
He’s been productive everywhere, too. His final season at Oklahoma State, his lone year at Washington, and now this year at Oregon have all showcased good combativeness in coverage. He’s a better coverage defender than he is a run support player — he’s not particularly big or physical. However, Oklahoma State and Washington asked him to play some modest volume in the nickel in 2022 and 2023, and Muhammad showcased coverage ability there despite the vast majority of his snaps coming outside.
So, Muhammad has a few pathways to success. He has good instincts in coverage to go with his combativeness at the catch point.
