Stats show Baltimore Ravens CBs Peters, Humphrey are NFL’s best duo

No NFL franchise is immune to the following statement. At some point, as a fan, your favorite football team will make a bad draft choice or an unwise personnel decision. Fortunately, if you self-identify as a Baltimore Ravens enthusiast, that’s something you won’t have to suffer through as often as some of these other squads.

The Ravens, one of the league’s better-run organizations for quite some time now, just get it. This is a team that got two Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees in the same draft: Jonathan Ogden and Ray Lewis in 1996, and even more recently, with the final selection of 2018’s selection meeting’s first round, the snagged a quarterback that you may have heard of, one Lamar Jackson.

He already has an MVP Trophy and a first-team All-Pro nod in his back pocket. Years pass, seasons change, and the Ravens don’t seem to lose their touch.

Here are two more guys the Baltimore Ravens’ fan base is pretty pumped about.

Though some of their stuff can be hard to follow, Pro Football Focus always seems to grab our attention when they say something.

Recently, they’ve been stacking the best talent at every position, and in a recent power ranking of sorts of the game’s 32 best outside cover guys, both of the Ravens’ starting corners, Marlon Humphrey and Marcus Peters made the top ten.

Here’s some of what was said by Ben Linsey, the writer of this one, in reference to Mr. Humphrey, the Ravens’ first-round selection in 2017. He earned the third-overall ranking.

"“We considered putting Humphrey atop the list of the best slot cornerbacks in the NFL, given that he has spent the majority of his snaps lined up in the slot over the past two seasons filling the void left by an injured Tavon Young. Humphrey’s seamless inside-outside versatility is a big reason why he ranks so highly here.The fifth-year cornerback out of Alabama has recorded at least 800 coverage snaps in the slot and out wide throughout his NFL career. He also ranks in at least the 87th percentile in coverage grades at both alignments. The most impressive part is that it all comes in a man-heavy Baltimore defense. Few cornerbacks in the league possess that kind of ability.”"

Again, it appears as though the Baltimore Ravens draft well, but when they cast their line in the free-agency pool, they tend to find some pretty good talent there too. Look no further than Mr. Peters if you need an example. Here’s Linsey’s analysis of him.

"“Peters and Humphrey are the only top-ten duo on this list and a big reason why Baltimore’s secondary has had the success that it has over the past two seasons. It’s impossible to discuss what Peters brings to the table and not start with his knack for getting his hands on the football, as his 31 interceptions since entering the league in 2015 are nine more than any other cornerback. And Peters ranks tied for fifth at the position in pass breakups (52) over that same time frame.His aggression will burn him on occasion, but you can’t say that Peters doesn’t make up for it with the positives he brings to the table.”"

Some of you didn’t catch that. Let’s paraphrase and restate. When stacked against the top 32 cornerbacks, Humphrey and Peters both land in the top ten. Take a look.

https://twitter.com/PFF/status/1399742784156831744

As you might expect, they figure to be key cogs in the Ravens defense again in 2021.

This just in, excellence continues in Baltimore with the Ravens as this franchise continues to make wise personnel decisions and coach guys into becoming key contributors.

These two combined for 33 starts, 150 total tackles, 3.5 sacks, six interceptions, 22 pass breakups, and 12 forced fumbles in 2020 (if you include what they did in the Ravens pair of postseason games).

Somewhere Ozzie Newsome is smiling.