Making Sense Of Brandon Browner

Seattle Seahawks cornerback Brandon Browner is a bit of a polarizing figure. At his best is very good. At his worst he’s so frustrating that’s its sickening. As with everything, his true value is somewhere in between those two extremes.

I get why most fans like him. Just the fact that he’s the opposite of Kelly Jennings (the frustrating player he replaced) instantly made him fan favorite. His 6 interceptions doesn’t hurt either. Personally, I don’t like measuring corners by interceptions. Ints are only a small part of what a CB does to help a team. It’s not even their primary job. Clearly there are better measures of a corner’s play.

I’ll spare you my thoughts on the matter, and instead take a look at what some of the advances stats:

The guys over at Advanced NFL Stats list Browner as the 4th best corner in the league based on win probability added. Most of that comes from his 6 interceptions, but they also factor in tackles and passes defended into that calculation as well, and Browner has great stats in both of those categories as well.

The guys over at Pro Football Focus have a bit of the opposite opinion. According to them, Browner gave up the 7th most yards of any player in the league, and that doesn’t even include the over 200 yard in penalties he gave up.

Browner clearly got better as the season went along. After 5 games, he was the worst in the the league, giving up a perfect 158.3 QB rating on passes thrown to the receiver that he was covering. By the end of the season, he wasn’t even in the top 10, and that rating had dropped somewhere under 102 (though I’m not sure where, since he wasn’t listed in the article).

One thing we so know, though, is that just 56.8% of the passes thrown to the receiver Browner was covering were completed, and that’s not bad at all. Neither is the fact that Browner still has 2 more years remains on a deal that pays him close to the veteran minimum salary.