Every NFL franchise has cornerstone pieces – even the New England Patriots, a contender for worst team in the league. While there’s been heavy media discussion surrounding the need to build an offense around rookie quarterback Drake Maye, we shouldn’t forget that the team has a budding star in cornerback Christian Gonzalez on the other side of the field. As a matter of fact, this upcoming Sunday will mark Gonzalez’s seventeenth game in the NFL, while last Sunday marked his sixteenth game.
Though it’s technically split across multiple seasons, this time span concludes what’s been effectively a rookie season’s worth of games for the young cornerback. New England fans have great reason to view him as potentially entering a long line of amazing Pariots cornerbacks, no reason bigger than when Gonzalez practically shut out star wide receiver Davante Adams.
In this piece, I’m going to break down several key statistics examining Gonzalez’s first 16 games. To give these metrics more context, I’ll be evaluating where Gonzalez stands with each of them in regards to other first-round cornerback debuts. After that, I’ll reveal his closest statistical comparison points, and I’ll talk about what they went on to achieve for the rest of their career, as well as how their teams effectively – or potentially ineffectively – used them. Lastly, I’ll explain the direction that New England’s defense could take moving forward in order to maximize the time they have with Gonzalez.
Methodology
My first step was to find every single instance of a first-round cornerback from 2006 to today, since 2006 is the furthest back that Pro Football Focus covers cornerback statistics. Including Gonzalez, this gives us 62 players. Keep in mind that he’s not the only cornerback with a rookie season’s worth of games spread across multiple years. In cases where cornerbacks missed a significant portion of their rookie season and played in their second year, I counted those accordingly in similar fashion to Gonzalez. Only three cornerbacks were in similar circumstances: Jaycee Horn, Darqueze Dennard, and Dre Kirkpatrick. Meanwhile, William Jackson III missed his entire rookie season; as a replacement, I counted his second season.
Once I had my final group, I then filtered our data set to look for twelve particular statistics. The first five are related to physical profile: height, weight, arm size, hand size, and speed. The last seven broadly cover coverage efficiency: coverage snaps per target, coverage snaps per reception, opponent passer rating, and each of the following per 35 coverage snaps: yards allowed, touchdowns allowed, interceptions, and pass breakups. I chose these statistics due to wanting to prioritize measurable ways to assess coverage success, even if they are not always perfect.
Physical Profile
Gonzalez all but fits the prototype of a big, physical shutdown corner. He ranks in the 64th percentile of height (6’1”), the 89th percentile of weight (205 lbs), the 65th percentile of arm size (32”), the 89th percentile of hand size (9.5”), and the 68th percentile of all corners (4.38 seconds in a 40 yard dash). To determine the closest comparison points for his athleticism, I converted and standardized every value into Z-scores. Following that, I calculated the total Euclidean distance across all five categories for each cornerback from Gonzalez. You can see his closest comparison points below, with their final distance mentioned in parentheses.
| Player | Height (feet/inches) | Weight (lbs) | Arm Size (inches) | Hand Size (inches) | Speed (40 yard dash seconds) |
| Christian Gonzalez | 6’1 | 205 | 32 | 9.5 | 4.38 |
| Deonte Banks | 6’0 | 205 | 31.375 | 9.375 | 4.35 |
| Pat Surtain II | 6’2 | 202 | 32.5 | 10 | 4.41 |
| Jalen Ramsay | 6’1 | 209 | 33.375 | 9.5 | 4.1 |
| Antonio Cromartie | 6’2 | 210 | 33.5 | 9.25 | 4.38 |
| Xavier Rhodes | 6’1 | 210 | 33.75 | 9.5 | 4.43 |
Unfortunately for Patriots fans, the player with the closest distance is current New York Giants cornerback Deonte Banks (0.258), who after an initially promising rookie season has had a miserable second year. However, the other four closest comparison points are a combination of Pro Bowl talent and one all-time great. First, there’s Pat Surtain II (0.304) – Gonzalez’s main inspiration and arguable contender for best cornerback of 2024. After him is future Hall of Fame great Jalen Ramsey (0.324), and two noteworthy “Hall of Very Good” players in Antonio Cromartie (0.348), and Xavier Rhodes (0.361). The jury’s still out on Banks, to be clear, but most people with Gonzalez’s profile end up performing way more than fine.
Coverage Efficiency
On one hand, opposing offenses have frequently tested Gonzalez, as he ranks in roughly the 47th percentile for coverage snaps per target and reception alike. At the same time though, this statistic could easily – and frankly does – mean that Gonzalez is often given tougher assignments than many contemporaries. With this context in mind, he finishes in the 77th percentile for yards allowed per 35 coverage snaps (34.45), as well as the 79th percentile for opposing passer rating (75.5). Though he’s targeted a lot, he’s quite effective at limiting yardage, even as he’s drawing high-target, high-profile opponents.
Additionally, Gonzalez ranks around the 80th percentile for touchdowns allowed per 35 coverage snaps (0.12), making him a reliable defensive player in the end zone too. Diving in deeper, only three rookies with at least as many coverage snaps as Gonzalez in his first sixteen games have given up fewer touchdowns per 35 coverage snaps in their rookie seasons: Marshon Lattimore, Sauce Gardner, and Jaycee Horn, a slot cornerback whose presence here speaks more to his specific role than his performance as a number one corner. At the very least, Lattimore and Gardner are great company for fellow early-career comparable standouts in this area.
Playmaking Ability
One common gripe with the 2024 Patriots defense is that they don’t force enough turnovers. Gonzalez himself, by the box score, doesn’t necessarily stand out in this department either (though ironically he picked up a fumble for a touchdown just last week). He only has two interceptions in his first sixteen games and a fairly low number of seven pass breakups. As a point of comparison, Sauce Gardner had two picks and 14 pass breakups in his first full season.
However, on a per-play basis, Gonzalez has still shown playmaking potential. In terms of interceptions per 35 coverage snaps, he’s still around the 47th percentile. For pass breakups, he’s in the 51st percentile. It’s also worth noting the inherent volatility of these statistics. Patriots fans may appreciate one particularly big example of this in Stephon Gilmore. His rookie season with the Bills ranks in the 25th percentile of interception rate and and the 55th percentile of pass breakups – and yet he went on to lead the league in picks in his 2019 Defensive Player of the Year season with New England. Although Gilmore is obviously not the same player as Gonzalez, the point remains that early trends for inherently volatile statistics don’t carry too much predictive weight.
Closest Overall Comps
For a comprehensive overview of all our statistics together, I decided to use three machine learning techniques I used in each of my previous articles: k-Means for clustering players together, Principal Component Analysis for reducing the number of dimensions our data has into two axes) and a k-NN algorithm to determine closest comparison points to Gonzalez. In simple terms, I first split the group into five different clusters representing cumulative spots on a scatter plot, reduced the number of dimensions to two broad categories – one for physical traits, and the other for performance in coverage – and then tried to find which cornerbacks had the least amount of distance from Gonzalez.
Patrick Peterson (0.92) and Jalen Ramsey (0.92) each lead the way, two of the premier cornerbacks of the 2010s and 2020s alike. Afterward is another star in Pat Surtain II (1.08). Much further away are two totally different instances of first-round cornerbacks: a former first-team All-Pro member in Xavier Rhodes (1.19) and Artie Burns (1.31), a former Pittsburgh Steelers cornerback who failed to live up to expectations.
Although they are not necessarily one to one stylistic comparisons, the closest case studies we have to Gonzalez seem to point toward him being a foundational defensive piece. However, it’s important to understand the several factors that led to the success stories that came before Gonzalez, as well as what went wrong for the one notable outlier.
Storytime: What Happened To These Players?
Let’s start with Peterson. In the decade that the Cardinals had him, they consistently surrounded him with a mix of pass rushers (Chandler Jones and Calais Campbell). Across their numerous defensive coordinators – most notably Ray Horton, Todd Bowles, and James Bettcher – the team had a very aggressive, blitz-heavy identity. Later in his career, when Peterson lost a bit of his athleticism, the Cardinals surrounded him with play-making safeties like Tyrann Matheiu (who unfortunately struggled with injury issues) and Budda Baker, though Arizona never quite complemented Peterson with another consistently great cornerback. Within the period in which the Cardinals had him, they ranked tenth in the league for opponent passer rating, 12th for interceptions, and fifth for sacks.
The Jaguars took a bit of a different path with Ramsey, in large part due to already having a core front seven that he complemented. Nonetheless, following his great rookie year, Jacksonville immediately paired him up with a fellow star corner in A.J. Bouye to cement one of the best cornerback tandems in the league. In 2017, the Jaguars had one of the best defenses of the decade and ended up a GOAT-led comeback away from a Super Bowl appearance. Ramsey’s disputes with the rest of his teammates, as well as his head coach, and the Jaguars front office, eventually led the organization to trade him. He’s since continued to be excellent across the league as a multi-franchise mercenary and surefire Hall of Fame player with a ring of his own.
Though it’s too soon to come to definitive conclusions, what we have seen so far from the Surtain-era Broncos seems to be encouraging, one outlier withstanding. Despite a high turnover in personnel over Surtain’s four seasons there, as well as a drastic switch in styles from the conservative Vic Fangio to the far more blitz-happy Vance Joseph, Denver’s defense this year currently ranks third in EPA. Since, 2021, the Broncos are sixth in that same metric too. More or less, the team’s defensive identity is centered around getting after the quarterback, with each of Nik Bonitto, Jonathon Cooper, John Franklin-Myers, and Zach Allen each having great seasons to complement Surtain II, who remains the most important player on the defense.
Rhodes offers an interesting case to assess. Under Mike Zimmer’s time with the Vikings, Rhodes played a key role in playing press-heavy and man-heavy coverage. To generalize, Minnesota typically played from a 4-3 base scheme dependent on disguised coverages, situational blitz variations of both A gaps (though, contrary to popular belief, not frequent), and a reliance on excellent safety play from Harrison Smith. After his All-Pro season in 2017, Rhodes wasn’t nearly as successful due to his physical decline, but in his short time with the Vikings, he was one of the best cornerbacks in the league.
I’ll conclude with Artie Burns. Coming from Miami University, Artie had the profile of a standard physical, man-coverage-specialist cornerback. Although he didn’t quite fit in with the Steelers, a zone-heavy defense, Burns initially showed promise as a rotation player alongside key pieces like James Harrison, Cameron Heyward, William Gay, and even TJ Watt later on. However, he was never able to work his way into sustainable starting time, especially with Joe Haden and Mike Hilton outplaying him for snaps near the end.
All five of these situations are fairly different from the current Patriots and Gonzalez when you factor in scheme, coaching, and organizational contexts. However, it’s not necessarily a coincidence that each of Peterson, Ramsey, Surtain II, and Rhodes were able to thrive in circumstances with strong team defenses, good coordinators, and organization-wide commitment to them as building blocks. New England does not need to suddenly become a blitz-happy team like the 2010s Cardinals or 2020s Broncos to understand the ways in which a team can maintain a strong defense. It has a great shutdown corner; to bring the most out of him though, the Patriots need better performances from pass rushers and more defensive backs to complement Gonzalez’s strengths.
Implications & Considerations
From everything we know about him – in the statistics and the eye test alike – Gonzalez has franchise-changing potential. However, he only has two years left in his contract with the Patriots. Furthermore, the current iteration of New England’s defense has performed at a subpar level; on the surface, it may look like a far cry from the situations that brought incredible results from the Ramsays and Petersons of the world. However, there’s reason to be hopeful, both for the future of the defense and Gonzalez’s development.
The 2024 Patriots have been devastated by absences from many key players. While evaluating the specifics of Jabrill Peppers’ domestic abuse case and coming to a definitive moral conclusion is beyond the scope of this column, what I can say is that at a football level, the defense undeniably suffered from losing him. As of right now, he should be back soon. You could say something similar about how New England’s rush defense fell off a cliff following linebacker Ja’Whaun Bentley’s season-ending injury, as well as take note of how blood clots kept star lineman Christian Barmore out for the vast majority of this season. It was only a year ago in which many of those same people were part the league’s eighth best EPA defense, and without Gonzalez for a large portion of it too. By itself, better injury luck over the next year won’t suddenly turn a very weak defense into an elite unit, but it could bring it closer to league average. It could also create the conditions in which Gonzalez and his cast, similar to Rhodes and his team, take a huge step forward.
My guess is that, understandably, the Patriots front office will prioritize the tackle and wide receiver positions. However, the expected departure of Jonathan Jones – a longtime Patriots veteran far past his best playing days and now playing in a more hyrbid and safety role – this off-season gives New England an opportunity to upgrade in the cornerback department. To bring this back to Gonzalez, it would be a smart move for the Patriots to pick up a strong number two at this postion. My preferred choice would be Paulson Adebo, who was playing well with the New Orlean Saints before a broken femur ended his season, but D.J. Reed, from the rival New York Jets, could be another good addition too. Either option would allow current New England number two corner, Marcus Jones, to play in his more natural role as a slot corner, as well as give the Patriots more options in their secondary.
Again; it’s not a one-to-one situation, but it could mirror the 2017 Jaguars pickup of A.J. Bouye to complement Ramsay. Combined with Pepper’s planned return and hopefully a closer to one-hundred showing from long-term starter Kyle Dugger next season, it’s not impossible to envision a better year for New England’s defense in 2025 and the continued development of its star corner. As far as the draft is concerned, New England could even draft an edge rusher like Penn State’s Abdul Carter, or even another potential big man corner in Michigan’s Will Johnson, if they decide that neither of the lead tackles or wide receivers are worth their spot in the draft.
Regardless of which direction the Patriots choose to head in for their short-term future, what we do know is that all signs are pointing toward the team having a franchise player in Gonzalez. How his story ends in New England could play a large role in determining not just if Gonzalez can become another franchise great – it could also determine whether the Patriots defense can ever return to its glory days.