There are a few cornerbacks who are good enough to get selected in the first round of the NFL Draft, but there's one clear best pick for teams looking to get a shutdown guy: Dee Milliner, out of Alabama.
2013 NFL Draft cornerback rankings: Dee Milliner a clear favorite
Dee Milliner is far and away the best cornerback in the NFL Draft, per every expert whose rankings we looked at.
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If you didn’t see Milliner dominating all season long as part of the best defense in college football, you might have seen him at the combine, when he ran the second-fastest 40 time amongst all defensive backs. Milliner’s a clear-cut difference maker at the next level.
We took a look at five different defensive back rankings - SB Nation’s (obviously), as well as those by CBS, The Sideline View, Walter Football, and Optimum Scouting and tallied up all the rankings, with a pretty clear favorite emerging:
- Dee Milliner, Alabama 50 (5 first place)
- Xavier Rhodes, Florida State, 44
- Desmond Trufant, Washington, 39
- Johnthan Banks, Mississippi State, 35
- Darius Slay, Mississippi State, 21
- David Amerson, NC State, 20
- Jordan Poyer, Oregon State, 17
- Jamar Taylor, Boise State, 13
- Blidi Wreh-Wilson, UConn, 12
- Logan Ryan, Rutgers, 9
- Robert Alford, SE Louisiana, 5
- DJ Hayden, Houston, 4
- Leon McFadden, San Diego State, 2
- BW Webb, William and Mary, 2
- Tyrann Mathieu, LSU, 1
As you can see, there’s a pretty clear top four -- Millner, Rhodes, Trufant, and Banks round out the top group in almost every ranking, with a few guys like Logan Ryan randomly sneaking into one or the other -- with a lot of difference in opinion after that. Only one person comparing defensive backs thinks Tyrann Mathieu, who looked like a sure first-rounder before being kicked off LSU, is one of the top ten cornerbacks available.
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