Jets cornerback Antonio Cromartie has played with cornerback Darrelle Revis, regarded by many as the best cornerback in the NFL. But Cromartie gave the honor to someone else during an appearance on Wednesday’s edition of Pro Football Talk on NBCSN.
Cromartie picked Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman.
“I think what he does at the line,” Cromartie said while explaining what makes Sherman special. “He’s lanky, he’s a long guy like myself. He gets his hands on the receiver and he pays attention to the receiver. He pays attention to what that receiver is doing down the field and he knows once that receiver gets 15 yards down the field he’s not coming back for the ball, the ball’s going to be down the field so he plays the leverage of what he has and he also uses the sideline to much of his advantage to try and get the receiver as much to the outside as he can. Most quarterbacks you see that are throwing it to him, most of those passes are underthrown balls because of the pressure on the quarterback in the pocket also.”
Cromartie initially hesitated to declare unequivocally that Sherman is the best cornerback, qualifying it with “arguably.” When pressed by Erik Kuselias, Cromartie embraced it.
“No arguably,” Cromartie said. “He is the best. There it is.”
And there it goes. And we’ll have some more from Cromartie later on.