Sports
Fox Sports Claims Broncos CB Pat Surtain II ‘Deserves Extra Credit’
The halfway point of the season is here. The Denver Broncos sit in a very favorable position at 5-4.
The Broncos roster is not flush with superstar talent and still probably has a few good offseasons of growth and talent acquisition before consistently competing with the best in the league, but the Broncos are undoubtedly ahead of schedule.
The Denver offense has been unsurprisingly uneven this season as rookie quarterback Bo Nix attempts to gain his footing surrounded by subpar offensive weaponry. The Broncos defense has been one of the NFL landscape’s biggest surprises.
While not many expected the Broncos defense to be this good in 2024 under the direction of Vance Joseph, especially as a unit with just one first-round player, the unit possesses a consensus “best player at his position” by most analysts across the league: cornerback Patrick Surtain II.
Entering his fourth year in the NFL, Surtain earned a whopping four-year, $96 million extension prior to the season and is arguably playing better than his record-breaking contract for a defensive back (when it was signed). He’s the straw that stirs the drink for the Broncos defensively. Denver’s ability to be a blitz-centric defense paired with man coverage on the back end is directly tied to how dominant Surtain is on a down-to-down basis.
For his play so far this season, Fox Sports’ Bucky Brooks named Surtain a starter on his All-22 Coaches Tape Team.
“The playmaking cover corner remains one of the best in the business on the island. Surtain challenges receivers utilizing various techniques to maintain proper leverage down the field. With defensive coordinator Vance Joseph willing to dial up exotic pressures from anywhere on the field, the Broncos’ CB1 deserves extra credit for his work as a one-on-one specialist on the perimeter,” Brooks wrote.
Along with Surtain, Kansas City Chiefs cornerback Trent McDuffie and Baltimore Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey also made the team as some of the best players at their position through the 2024 midway point. While both these cornerbacks are having a phenomenal season, they both play opposite some of the best offenses in the NFL, which puts them in favorable position to feast on opponents trying play catch-up in the passing game.
What Surtain is asked to do on the field is also very different. Per Pro Football Focus, he has played the fifth-highest rate of man coverage in the league of any corners with at least 250 coverage snaps at 39.3%, compared to McDuffie at 18th-most (31.7%), and Humphrey at 23rd-most (30.3%).
Surtain has also been excellent in tackling in man coverage, accumulating five tackles with zero missed tackles in man. Teams also are not throwing at him that much, only targeting him 17 times on 267 coverage snaps, the second-lowest rate of targets per coverage reps in the NFL (at just 6.4%), and only behind Marshon Lattimore.
The Broncos are not flush with superstars currently. Surtain is the only true bonafide player that any casual NFL fan would know about on this roster. He’s earned one All-Pro accoloade, and is likely to earn another.
Outside of Surtain, Zach Allen is having an absolutely incredible season. He should start getting more praise from those covering the NFL.
The Denver media itself should be doing a better job of banging the drum of just how good Allen has been. He was kept off of Brooks’ midseason team by arguably the only two interior defensive linemen having better overall seasons — Chris Jones and Dexter Lawrence.
If Allen can keep playing like he did the first half of the season, he should be in the All-Pro conversation with Surtain when it’s all said and done.
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