Written By Arif Hasan (ColdOmaha.com)
Confidence.
It would be easy to end the analysis there, but there certainly are a number of questions surrounding the 54th pick for the Minnesota Vikings. Obviously there are some pretty standard questions to ask about where he fits and how the Vikings plan on using their second-round pick when it seems fairly certain that they have their three top cornerbacks set, and some decent depth—with last year’s starter, Terence Newman, presumed to be a versatile backup.
But there are other interesting questions surrounding Alexander—a player with no interceptions seems like an odd choice for a second-round pick, though something has to be said about a guy ranked 26th overall from the consensus of experts.
The flipside of those missing interceptions is that passes weren’t completed in his direction. Over the course of his career, Alexander saw only 106 targets, and only 33 of those targets were completions—a completion rate of 31.1 percent.
Beyond that, he allowed zero touchdowns in 23 games.
According to Pro Football Focus, he had the fifth-fewest targets per snap of any defensive back in the draft, and while that sounds impressive on its own, he accumulated that impressive statistic while following the opponent’s best receiver.
Which is to say that over 23 games, the best receiver a team could muster against him produced 33 catches for no touchdowns. In 2016, it was only 19 catches on 57 targets (a 33 percent completion rate) for 258 yards.
Consider first-round receiver Will Fuller. Against Alexander, Fuller caught two catches for 37 yards. Or second-round receiver Sterling Shepard—two catches for 27 yards on six targets, before Oklahoma moved him to the slot to get rid of Alexander.
Statistics are nice, but it’s also important to be true to the fundamentals of evaluation—technique, scheme and context. Can his astounding success translate into the NFL?
If we first start by bringing context into the specific statistics of his play, I think his resume grows more impressive. Pro Football Focus typically will argue that an impressive statistical resume hides some schematic advantage or can be boosted by assignment. In the case of Alexander, they think his impressive completion rate underrepresented his play on the field. From their draft guide:
“[Alexander] was hung out to dry a little by Clemson’s coverages that often left him isolated with no underneath help or safety over the top, leading to easy completions underneath in off coverage.”
This isolation meant he wasn’t the only person to compare himself to Darrelle Revis.
Generally speaking, one has to be pretty careful about evaluating defenders on a defense with a multitude of talented athletes; with Shaq Lawson, Kevin Dodd, Jayron Kearse, T.J. Green, D.J. Reader and B.J. Goodson, Alexander saw two of his defensive teammates in the consensus top 100, and six of them in the top 200.
But in the case of Alexander, the other athletes pivoted off of his work, not the other way around.
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