Richard Sherman as ninth best cornerback ever is acceptable. However…

Let’s check out those stats

By the way, above is a rare photo of Sanders actually attempting a tackle.

So. The following table shows the first six seasons for both Sanders and Sherman.

Sanders has a huge advantage in return yards. He gave his team an extra 14.9 yards per interception return, and that’s a big advantage. He also had four more touchdowns – although over six seasons, that’s not exactly a huge difference.

As for passes defensed, the data is missing for Sanders’ first four seasons. Note that both men have identical totals for years five and six, breaking up 27 passes. For the remaining eight years of Sanders’ career, he had 67 more pass defenses, an average of 8.4 per season. I certainly can’t guarantee it, but I’d say it’s a safe bet that Richard Sherman will defend more than eight passes for the foreseeable future.

Time to tackle the big issue

Finally, we come to the big one. Tackles. Sanders was noted as a great ballhawk, and for good reason. You did look at the chart up there, right?

Still, Sherman took the ball from the opposing team exactly as many times as Sanders. Deion’s return yardage is great, but it’s not like Sherman can’t pick off a pass.

So what happens when the receiver makes the catch? Or the running back gets into the defensive backfield? Sherman drops the ballcarrier a lot. A lot more than the Neon One.

For the first four years of Sanders’ career, the NFL simply counted combined tackles. It is fun to note that for the years we do have the data, Deion didn’t exactly subscribe to the theory of gang tackling. Seven assists one year, and two the next. Yes, two assists. For his entire career, Sanders had 27 assists.

Richard Sherman had twenty assists in 2016 alone.

Over the first six years of his “number one” career, Sanders had 267 tackles. Sherman dropped the other guy 342 times. That’s 75 tackles Sherman made, while Sanders played matador. Here’s a fun Google search: “Deion Sanders missed tackles”. You’ll find a lot of results. Here’s a fun one. I won’t say Sanders doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame, but the best cornerback ever? Ridiculous. This is the guy who referred to making a tackle as a business decision, after all.

So who’s the real number one for now? I’ll just mention Rod Woodson had eighteen more interceptions than the Neon Matador, and hit like a linebacker. Woodson played in 238 games and made 1,049 tackles. Sanders, 188 games and 493 tackles. That’s 4.4 tackles per game versus 2.6. That’s about 30 more tackles every season. And he intercepted more passes per season than Sanders, too, 4.8 to 4.5. Tell me again, Gil, how was Deion the best? Woodson is the standard Sherman is shooting for. And I think he’s got a great chance to reach it.