The Pittsburgh Steelers have traditionally been led by a dominant front seven which allowed them to protect their cornerbacks. This means the team hasn’t felt the need to add an elite cornerback. This changed when the Steelers signed Joe Haden and he added some real star power to the unit.
Now this season, Pittsburgh has done something similar by signing cornerback Patrick Peterson to replace Cameron Sutton. We considered the move an upgrade and based on the cornerback rankings from our friends at Touchdown Wire, they agree.
Here’s what they had to say about Peterson:
The 33-year-old Peterson made the 10th panel on our best cornerbacks list with a renaissance season in which he allowed 48 catches on 80 targets for 584 yards, 198 yards after the catch, five touchdowns, five interceptions, nine pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 77.3 — the lowest passer rating he’s allowed in a season since the 65.5 he put up in 2015. In addition, Peterson did all this on a defense run by Ed Donatell that did very little to help its players with pressure schemes and coverage switches — Donatell was partying like it’s 1999, and in this case, that wasn’t a good thing.
Nonetheless, Peterson was great in both zone and man coverage (he had an opponent passer rating of 54.2 in zone coverage, and a 67.4 passer rating allowed in man), and he put on a series of clinics in the 2022 season regarding how to deal with some of the NFL’s best receivers.
