Of course our CBs would look worse if you take away the great pass rush. That's true for Bama too. The fact is though, people can say our CBs are mediocre all they want too but at the end of the day there hasn't been a SINGLE time they've been burned deep. Not a once. Bama had a CB burned deep to start the OM game. LSU allowed 2 passes longer than we did vs Bama and 130 more total passing yards. Against LSU, Bama had 5 recievers average over 10 ypc. Against us? 2. Yeah our pass rush is better but LSU did have the home crowd advantage too. Yeah Tua was hurt for us but he was just as gimpy at LSU. Everyone agrees LSU has a top 5 secondary and yet our CBs did better.
We held Burrow to his lowest passer rating of the year, and his 2nd lowest QBR. Bama has a good pass rush too yet nobody would dare say they have "average " CBs and they'd be exposed without the pass rush.
We held Mond to his lowest passer rating of the year, 2nd lowest comp %, and 2nd lowest QBR. Once again, our CBs did just as good of a job as Bama's did, and again Bama has a good pass rush too.
Stidham is bad? OK, but we held Stidham to his lowest passer rating of the year. Next lowest was UGA, one after that is LSU. Are their CBs average too?
Last year we had the same DL, and had a pretty damn good pass rush. Yet we got burned deep often. That's what happens when your CBs are average. It's not the case this year
How many games do we have to put up not allowing a passing TD over 20 yards before we can say the CBs are really good? Nobody does this to LSU's or Bama's or UGA's DBs even when they have a good DL. Yes our pass rush masks flaws but there's absolutely 0 evidence though 10 games that our secondary is 2nd to anyone in the conference, much less that our CBs are average
This is a holdover of the preseason narrative we all had (CBs area liability), but it just doesn't match up to what has been proven on the field