You cannot undersell how well McKinney has played through five weeks.
Green Bay Packers safety Xavier McKinney is having a hell of a season. In five games with the Packers, he’s managed to record an interception every single time he’s suited up in green and gold — an almost unfathomable hot streak for the 2024 free-agent signing. McKinney now has six consecutive games with an interception, including his final game with the New York Giants last season. That streak is tied for the longest interception streak since the merger, according to Stathead. McKinney is also the only player to have such a streak while playing for multiple teams.
At this point, it would be an upset if McKinney wasn’t named a First-Team All-Pro, just off of his efforts from the first five games of the year. Last season, only three players recorded more than five interceptions. Two of the players who brought down more than five interceptions, Dallas’ DaRon Bland and Atlanta’s Jessie Bates, both were named First-Team All-Pros by the Pro Football Writers Association.
But how good has McKinney’s season been overall? With help from NFL Pro’s data, which comes from the player tracking data that the league and teams receive, we can help paint that picture.
According to the player tracking data, McKinney has played 150 coverage snaps at the deep safety position. In those snaps, he’s allowed zero yards as the nearest defender to a passing target and has brought down five interceptions.
Among the 68 most-played safeties in the league this year, he ranks first in adjusted net yards per coverage snap, which treats touchdowns as a gain of 20 yards and interceptions as a loss of 45. For reference, this weighting for passing efficiency is more correlated to wins than passer rating.
The Packers’ other safeties rank 24th (Javon Bullard) and 49th (Evan Williams) for perspective.
When you look at the value McKinney has brought to the team, relative to the average safety, he stands out even more. Among those 68 safeties, they generally give up 0.41 adjusted yards per coverage snap played. McKinney’s 2024 average right now is -1.5. Compared to the average safety, he’s already brought the Packers nearly 300 adjusted yards of value this season, both by shutting down the middle of the field and by stealing interceptions.
ANY/A Value per Coverage Snap - Safeties, 2024
- Xavier McKinney: +287 yards
- Kerby Joseph: +176
- Justin Simmons: +105
- Xavier Woods: +79
- Nick Cross: 78
Few safeties in the NFL can claim they have been even one-fourth as valuable as McKinney in 2024. There really is no way of underselling his impact. The third-ranked safety league-wide from this perspective is Justin Simmons, who McKinney is nearly three times more productive than.
If you want to know who has had the roughest season this year at safety, it’s the Philadelphia Eagles’ C.J. Gardner-Johnson, who in 109 coverage snaps has allowed 158 passing yards as the nearest defender to a target and three touchdowns through the air. Extrapolating McKinney and Gardner-Johnson’s rates over a full season, you’re talking about a difference of thousands of adjusted yards between the two starting safeties.
The McKinney All-Pro campaign starts now.
