The disappearance of the star cornerback, with Domonique Foxworth
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 16 November 2024
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Justin Jefferson: Four years, $140 million. CeeDee Lamb: Four years, $136 million. Amon-Ra St. Brown: Four years, $120 million. A.J. Brown: Three years, $96 million. The market for wide receivers has exploded in recent years. But what about the players tasked with slowing them down...the cornerbacks? Their market has stagnated. Moreover, the position that defined cool in the era of Deion Sanders seems almost devoid of superstars in 2024. What happened to the star cornerback? Robert Mays explores that question with Domonique Foxworth, who covers the NFL for ESPN and spent seven years playing corner in the league, on this episode of The Money Down, a special four-part miniseries from The Athletic Football Show focused on the business of the NFL.
Host: Robert Mays
With: Domonique Foxworth
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Producer: Chris Flannery
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Follow Robert on X: @robertmays
Follow Domonique on X: @Foxworth24
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The future is unpredictable at times, that the open university are the experts in distance learning, allowing you to fit study around your life. |
| 0:11.3 | What's more, you'll have support from dedicated tutors every step of the way. |
| 0:16.1 | Now, suddenly your possibilities are open. |
| 0:20.2 | Registered by the 5th of September to get started the open |
| 0:24.1 | the open university the future is open welcome welcome welcome the athletic football show i'm robert mays and i am very excited today to kick off a Welcome, the Athletic Football Show. |
| 0:38.8 | I'm Robert Mays, and I am very excited today to kick off a special series of shows here on the Athletic Football Show feed that will be coming your guys' way over the next month or so. |
| 0:48.1 | This is The Money Down, four special episodes all focused on the business of the NFL. |
| 0:53.5 | And that's a broad topic, and that was the intention as we decided which shows we wanted to hit in this series. We'll be talking about how the NFL was marketed, how it's broadcasted, how teams are built, and a lot more. We're starting the series off with a topic that I've been thinking about a lot recently. Over the past five years or so, we've had plenty of discussions |
| 1:11.0 | about the markets for individual positions. The decline of running back salaries, the explosion |
| 1:15.3 | of receiver contracts, but one spot I think has been a bit overlooked in those conversations |
| 1:19.7 | is the state of the cornerback market. Here's one stat for you. In 2016, five cornerbacks |
| 1:25.8 | had an average annual salary that was at least 9% of the salary |
| 1:29.9 | cap when the deal was signed. That same year, seven wide receivers also hit that figure, |
| 1:35.6 | pretty even. Fast forward to 2024, and there are still only six cornerbacks making 9% |
| 1:41.6 | of the cap. There are 21 receivers. |
| 1:45.3 | So while the wide receiver market is boomed, the cornerback market has stagnated. |
| 1:49.4 | Seems counterintuitive, right? |
| 1:51.1 | If past catchers are more valuable, why have the guys covering them become less valuable? |
| 1:56.7 | And to take it a step further, why is cornerback, a position that was home to guys like |
| 2:01.0 | Dion Sanders in terms like Revis Island, faded from the superstar spotlight as receivers and |
| 2:06.9 | other positions have become the faces of the sport? To help me explore all of this, we chatted |
| 2:11.1 | with Dominique Foxworth from ESPN, a former NFL cornerback himself, who idolized Dion and |
... |
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