The Commanders hiring Daronte Jones as their new DC signals a much needed overhaul of the defense this offseason. Jones comes to Washington from the Minnesota Vikings, where he spent the last four years as DBs coach and Passing Game Coordinator under DC Brian Flores, who was also interviewed by the Commanders.
In his introductory press conference, Dan Quinn indicated that he expected Jones to put his stamp on the Commanders’ defense. While details of the new look defense are unlikely to emerge until training camp or later, it is a fair bet that it will have some resemblance to Flores scheme, which zone blitz concepts to generate pressure from all over the defensive front. To implement this type of scheme the Commanders will need multiple defensive backs who can play in zone and match coverage.
While fans have been preoccupied with the edge position, the switch to a new defensive scheme is likely to require some level of re-tooling of every position group. The underperformance of Washington’s defense in 2025 compounds the questions about which of Washington’s returning defenders will suit the new scheme and are worth brining back.
To get a better idea of what DC Daronte Jones has to work with, and where new injections of talent are needed, I will be doing breakdowns of Washington’s defensive starters and major contributors in 2025. I will start with CB, which I consider to be among the Commanders’ most underrated needs.
Evaluating Coverage Performance
One reason that fans may underrate the need at CB is that we tend to measure the wrong things when talking about coverage defenders. When we talk about receivers, the first stat that comes up is receiving yards. Yet, for some reason, when we look at the defenders who match up against them, the main metrics that come up are interceptions (INT) and passes defended (PD). If yardage allowed in coverage is even mentioned it’s usually an afterthought.
No doubt, interceptions are high impact plays. But they are also rare events. For example, the 2025 regular season interception leader was Chicago safety Kevin Byard, who had 7 picks and 8 passes defended in 17 games. Kevin made a play on the ball in nearly every game. The 15 high profile plays, which earned him first team All Pro and Pro Bowl nominations accounted for just 1.4% of his 1,071 defensive snaps. Are we really comfortable that those 15 plays capture his performance on the 720 snaps he played in coverage? Or do we need some measure of what he did on the other 97.9% of coverage snaps?
A CB’s main responsibility on a down-to-down basis is to contain receivers in coverage. The best summary metric I have found to encapsulate overall coverage performance is rate of yardage allowed, expressed as Yards/Coverage Snap (Y/Cov Snp). This is essentially the flipside of Yards/Route Run, which is the best summary productivity metric for receivers. Since it is productivity stat, it enables fair comparisons between players with different amounts of playing time, which is a problem with receiving totals.
I have de-emphasized Passes Defended (PD), because I think it’s overrated. Pass breakups often occur when a CB allows his receiver to gain separation to draw a target. So, we are rewarding the defender for mitigating the damage caused by their coverage lapse. Conversely, nobody tries to count passes that didn’t get thrown because receivers are blanketed. Preventing targets can stress the offense more than pass breakups, because taking away the QB’s first read gives more time for pressure to arrive and forces poor decision making. Preventing targets is one part of the mix which goes into Y/Cov Snp, along with pass breakups and containment of Yardage After the Catch.
Yards/Coverage Snap does have a significant limitation. It is an advanced stat, which means that it is based on film breakdowns. Scoring coverage plays requires making judgement calls, because it can be unclear who is responsible for receiver as a play unfolds without knowing the team’s coverage scheme and calls. As a result, there is some level of subjectivity, which inevitably leads to variability between analysts.
To cope with inter-observer variability, this article used stats from two, independent sources: Pro Football Focus (PFF) and Pro Football Reference (PFR). Where the two services disagreed, I reported two numbers as a range, with PFF first and PFR second. If only one number is reported, it means that PFF and PFR agreed. Reporting numbers in this way does add some complexity, but I thought it was worth it to give readers a get a better idea of how much confidence to have in the individual players’ numbers
Overall, there was very strong correlation between the PFF and PFR data sets. For example, the correlation coefficient between the Y/Cov Snap values from the two sources for the 103 most active CBs in 2025 was a 0.856, indicating a high level of overall agreement. However, approximately 27% of the variability in each dataset was not accounted for by that relationship, meaning that there was still a level disagreement on the coverage metrics for some players.
In addition to my primary metric, I also looked at INTs, TDs allowed, and Yards After the Catch Allowed. To permit fair comparisons across players with different numbers of playing time and opportunities, these were all converted from raw production stats to productivity stats as follows:
Interception Rate – Percentage of targets intercepted (INT%)
TD Rate – Percentage of coverage snaps allowing a TD (TD%)
Yardage After the Catch – YAC per reception allowed (YAC/Rec)
Coverage Metric Reference Ranges
The analysis in this article was performed on a sample of 103 CBs who played 233 or more coverage snaps in 2025, essentially Noah Igbinoghene and every CB who played more than him. This allows us to compare all of the Commanders’ CBs with enough coverage snaps to generate reliable statistics to the rest of the league. It also corresponds to a little over 3 CBs per NFL team, on average.
Since the stats I’m using may be unfamiliar to most readers, I thought it would be helpful to provide the following reference ranges for comparison with the Commanders’ player stats.
Rate of Yardage Allowed – Y/Cov Snp
Interception Rate – INT%
TD Rate – TD%
Yardage After the Catch – YAC/Rec
2025 Commanders’ CBs in Coverage
Now, let’s have a look at how the Commanders’ CBs held up in coverage, in order of playing time. Rankings are among the 103 CBs with as much or more playing time as Noah Igbinoghene.
Mike Sainristil, Second Year, 2026 Cap Number $2.1Million
2025 Snap Counts: Wide Corner 499, Slot Corner 377, Box 133, Other 15
2025 Basic Stats: 17 games | 51 Tkl | 34 Asst | 19 Stops | 4 INT (Team Lead) | 12 PD (Team Lead)
2025 Advanced Coverage Stats:
- Y/Cov Snp: PFF 1.42 (rk 96), PFR 1.21 (rk 79)
- INT Rate: PFF 4.17% (rk 13), PFR 4.49% (rk 11)
- TD Rate: PFF 1.65% (rk 101), PFR 1.48% (rk 100)
- YAC/Rec: PFF 6.0 (rk 95), PFR 4.8 (rk 72)
Sainristil was drafted by the Commanders to play nickel CB in 2024. He was a day 1 starter at CB, and played all 20 games, tallying the 4th most snaps on the Commanders’ defense. Due to poor performance by the original intended starters, he wound up playing 86% of his snaps at CB on the outside. Judging by official league stats he had a good season, leading the team in Passes Defended (14), and interceptions (2), and finishing fourth on the team in combined tackles.
In 2025, the plan was to move Mikey back to his natural position in the slot. This time injuries intervened to force a move back outside. He wound up splitting his snaps at CB 55.7% to 44.3% between wide alignment and the slot. He again led the team in INTs and PDs. When adjusted for passing targets, his Interception Rate ranked just outside the 90th percentile of CBs, making him one of the top ballhawks at the position.
The problem with Sainristil’s play was that he was also picked on by opposing QBs for big gains and scores. According to PFR, Sainristil allowed the second most yardage in coverage of any CB in the regular season (859 yds), the most TDs (10), the most receptions (69), and the most yards after the catch (414).
Adjusting the receiving yardage and TD totals by playing time doesn’t make his coverage snaps look much better. PFF attributed more receptions to Sainristil than PFR, resulting in lower rankings by rate of yardage allowed (Y/Cov Snp) and yardage after the catch (YAC/Rec). PFF’s numbers rank him close to last in the league in Y/Cov Snp (96/103) and YAC/Rec (95/103). PFR’s numbers make him look better, but he still ranked in the bottom quartile of the league in Y/Cov Snp and in the bottom 30% in YAC/Rec 72/103. The two stats services both ranked his TD rate in the bottom 4 of the 103 most active CBs.
It is worth noting that, like all of the Commanders’ returning CBs, Sainristil’s coverage numbers got worse in 2025 compared to 2024. Last season, Sainristil allowed 1.09 Y/Cov Snp per PFF, which ranked 69th among the most active 103 CBs. His 2025 numbers represent a 26% drop in in league rank from his rookie season. It is possible, and even likely, that some of Sainristil’s struggles in coverage were due to larger issues in the Commanders’ secondary in 2025. Nevertheless, he has a lot of work ahead of him to demonstrate that he belongs in the starting lineup. Heading into the third season of his rookie contract, he still has plenty of time to turn things around. Hopefully he will benefit from a switch back to his natural position in the slot, as well as the changes to the coaching staff and defensive scheme.
Marshon Lattimore, Under Contract through 2026, Cap Number $18.5 million
2025 Snap Counts: Wide Corner 454, Slot Corner 24, Box 39, Other 4
2025 Basic Stats: 9 games | 16 Tkl | 11 Asst | 5 Stops | 1 INT | 7 PD
2025 Advanced Coverage Stats:
- Y/Cov Snp: PFF 0.82 (rk 29), PFR 0.98 (rk 44)
- INT Rate: PFF 3.03% (rk 27), PFR 2.70% (rk 28)
- TD Rate: 0.64% (rk 52)
- YAC/Rec: PFF 2.4 (rk 8), PFR 2.7 (rk 9)
Lattimore was acquired in a 2024 mid-season trade with the Saints to address deficiencies in the coverage unit. The trade sent 2025 third, fourth and sixth round picks to the Saints, with a fifth-round pick coming back to Washington, which was used to acquire Deebo Samuel. Lattimore was arrested on gun charges in January, adding to doubts about his future in Washington.
Despite the near consensus view that Lattimore has been a bust, when healthy, he has been the Commanders’ best coverage corner throughout his two seasons in Washington, and the competition is not particularly close.
In 2025, he was the only Commanders’ CB to perform in or near the top half of the league in each of the advanced coverage metrics that I tracked in this article. In the most important category, rate of yardage allowed, PFF’s numbers placed him in the top third of the NFL. PFR attributed a few more receptions and yardage to him, but still place him above median of the103 CBs with the most playing time. He was right around median in TD rate.
Fans might have expected more interceptions from the team’s CB1. However, Lattimore’s tight coverage was somewhat self-limiting in this respect. Lattimore was only targeted on 10.5% of coverage snaps, the 14th lowest target rate of 103 CBs. That translates to the 14th fewest opportunities to make interceptions. His Interception Rate, which is a better indicator of playmaking ability, ranked in the top 30% of players at his position.
Where Lattimore really excelled was in limiting yardage gained by receivers after the catch. The figures from both stats services placed Lattimore in the top 10 of NFL CBs in this important, but often overlooked aspect of coverage performance. He was the only one of Washington’s CBs for whom this was not a significant concern.
A big knock on Lattimore, which is not captured by coverage stats, is that he was heavily penalized. While it was certainly an issue with his play in 2025, he was in good company in that regard. Drawing pass interference penalties tends to go hand in hand with playing tight coverage in today’s NFL. According to NFLpenalties.com 8 of the 10 leaders in penalty yardage per game were defensive backs. Lattimore ranked 10th, at 5.24 Yd/Game. But the players who were even more penalized than Lattimore included some of the best CBs in the game, such as Pat Surtain (Rank 7, 5.74 Yd/Game), A.J. Terrell (Rank 6, 5.76 Yd/Game), Carlton Davis III (Rank 2, 8.90 Yd/Game) and Riley Moss (Rank 1, 10.68 Yd/Game).
Lattimore has certainly not been without issues, including injuries, penalties and his most recent legal problem. But if the team does decide to move on from him this offseason, he will leave a big gap to fill in the secondary. One player who might be able to help is the next CB in the list.
Trey Amos, Rookie, 2026 Cap Number $1.65 Million
2025 Snap Counts: Wide Corner 433, Slot Corner 30, Box 47, Other 1
2025 Basic Stats: 10 games | 19 Tkl | 13 Asst | 8 Stops | 0 INT | 6 PD
2025 Advanced Coverage Stats:
- Y/Cov Snp: PFF 1.06 (rk 60), PFR 1.02 (rk 47)
- INT%: 0% (rk 74 Tie)
- TD Rate: 0.32% (rk 25)
- YAC/Rec: PFF 6.17 (rk 98), PFR 4.56 (rk 62)
The Commanders selected Amos 61st overall in the 2025 draft. Prior to fracturing his fibula in the Week 10 loss to the Lions, he showed promise of being one of the best CBs in the draft class.
Treynavion’s rookie season ball production stats were OK, but will not wow anyone. He made the 9th most pass breakups in the rookie CB class, while playing the 14th most defensive snaps, but was not among the 9 rookie CBs with at least one regular season INT (Max 3, Denzel Burke, AZ).
Where he showed greater promise was in shutting down receivers in coverage. The season total Y/Cov Snp figures were in fairly close agreement between stat services, and place him around league average, which is not bad for a rookie. However, it is worth noting that his PFF yardage allowed stats were blown out by a single bad game against the Seahawks, in which he gave up 102 receiving yards and a TD. Excluding that game drops his Y/Cov Snp figure to 0.77, within the “lockdown” range, which I’d roughly put at Y/Cov Snp < 0.8. Of course, we can’t ignore that game. But it does illustrate how the season stats can be influenced by a single bad performance.
In 4/10 games this season (NYG, LVR, LAC, KC), Amos had lockdown performances by consensus among stats services, with Y/Cov Snp at or below 0.64. These included a shutout performance against the Raiders and a near shutout against the Chiefs. PFF also had him in the lockdown range against the Packers and the Bears, but PFR had him above 1.0 Y/Cov Snp in both games.
The two stats services both credited Amos with 1 TD conceded in coverage in 2025, although they disagreed over which game it occurred in (PFF – SEA, PFR – KC). His rate of TD’s allowed was the 25th lowest among the 103 most active CBs.
Where Amos might have the most room for improvement is in containing YAC, although this was the metric with the largest disparity between stat services. According to PFR, his 4.56 YAC/Rec was just a little below median. PFF had him at 6.17 YAC/Rec, which was the 6th worst figure among 103 CBs.
Overall, Amos flashed the ability to become a lockdown corner in his rookie season. If he can build on that performance and become more consistent, he will be a building block for the future.
Jonathan Jones, 2026 Free Agent
2025 Snap Counts: Wide Corner 413, Slot Corner 13, Box 48, Other 10
2025 Basic Stats: 12 games | 30 Tkl | 11 Asst | 7 Stops | 1 Sack | 0 INT | 5 PD
2025 Advanced Coverage Stats:
- Y/Cov Snp: PFF 1.18 (rk 78), PFR 1.32 (rk 88)
- INT%: 0% (rk 74)
- TD Rate: 0.0% (rk 1, 9-way tie)
- YAC/Rec: PFF 4.17 (Rk 54), PFR 4.42 (Rk 59)
Jones was signed to a $5.5 million, one year contract last offseason to bolster the depth at CB. He played sparingly early on and was pressed into service as a full-time starter after Marshon Lattimore tore an ACL and MCL in the Week 9 loss to the Seahawks.
Jones came to Washington with experience playing outside, in the slot and at free safety, the Commanders used him almost exclusively as an outside CB. Despite some discrepancy in the actual numbers, both stats services rated Jones in the bottom quartile of CBs in Y/Cov Snp. Unlike Mike Sainristil, Jones did not compensate for below average coverage performance with ball production.
On the positive side, Jones did not allow any TD receptions, and he was a little above average in limiting YAC. But that doesn’t really make up for allowing so much yardage in coverage.
Noah Igbinoghene, 2026 Free Agent
2025 Snap Counts: Wide Corner 65, Slot Corner 237, Box 68, Other 3
2025 Basic Stats: 15 games | 22 Tkl | 13 Asst | 8 Stops | 1 Sack | 0 INT | 5 PD
2025 Advanced Coverage Stats:
- Y/Cov Snp: PFF 1.30 (rk 88), PFR 1.09 (rk 60)
- INT%: 0% (rk 74)
- TD Rate: 0.0% (rk 1, 9-way tie)
- YAC/Rec: PFF 8.9 (Rk 103), PFR 6.83 (Rk 101)
Igbinoghene followed Head Coach Dan Quinn from Dallas to Washington in 2024 on a cheap, one year deal. He ended up playing the second most snaps at CB on the team, and was the Commanders’ primary slot receiver. Igbinoghene may have flown under the radar for many fans, because he did not produce eye-catching ball production stats. But he performed above expectations in coverage, allowing just 0.93 Y/Cov Snp per PFF, which ranked 42nd/103 CBs (0.84 Y/Cov Snp per PFR). His performance in 2024 earned him a $1.5 million contract extension in 2025 to backup Mike Sainristil in the slot.
Injuries to both starting outside CBs in 2025 forced Sainristil to move back outside, and Noah took over as the primary slot CB from Week 10. Like Sainristil, his performance in coverage failed to match the previous season’s standard.
In 2025, Igbinoghene conceded a higher rate of yardage in coverage, dropping him below median per PFR and into the bottom quartile of the league, per PFF. Where he seemed to really struggle was allowing yardage after the catch. According to PFF, he allowed highest YAC/Rec of the 103 CBs in the sample. PFR’s numbers rank him as the third worst CB at containing YAC. His failure to contain YAC in 2025 was actually a continuation of the weak point of his game from 2024, when he averaged 5.85 YAC/Rec per PFR or 9.4 YAC/Rec per PFF. This weakness was better concealed in 2024 when he did a better job of preventing receptions.
Conclusion – What Daronte Jones Have to Work With in 2026?
The Commanders might face a bigger decision with Marshon Lattimore this offseason than many seem to appreciate. He has had issues on and off the field since they traded for him in 2024. But he has also been their best CB in coverage. If they do decide to part ways with him this offseason, they will have to fill a gap at boundary CB.
Trey Amos flashed ability to cover WR1s in his rookie campaign, but was also inconsistent. Assuming normal development with NFL experience he has promise to fill one of the starting boundary CB roles. The big question is who starts opposite him. If it is not Lattimore, there is no other obvious option on the current roster. The Commanders will have to look for a replacement for Lattimore in free agency. Given the state of the current depth pipeline, it would be advisable to look to the draft as well.
Mike Sainristil has been the Commanders best ball producer at CB in the first two seasons of his rookie contract, but has struggled to contain receptions and scores in coverage. Despite being drafted to play nickel corner, he has played predominantly outside, where his size gives an advantage to bigger receivers. Daronte Jones singled him out in his introductory presser as a player he was looking forward to working with. So there his hope that a change in scheme and position will help him realize his potential and conceal his weaknesses.
Based on last year’s performance in coverage, and what we saw the previous season, Noah Igbinoghene might be good value to re-sign at his 2025 pay level as a back-up. But both he and Johathan Jones are replacement level players at this point in their careers. So it might be better to look to get younger at the position if the opportunity arises in the draft.