Leading up to the 2024 draft, the Philadelphia Eagles' last four first-round picks came from either Alabama or Georgia, so it was kind of unexpected that they drafted Quinyon Mitchell, the cornerback out of Toledo. Turns out, they nailed it. He ended up being the runner-up for Defensive Rookie of the Year and solidified himself as one of the premier cornerbacks in the NFL.
The only thing he needs to add to his game is interceptions. He had a bunch of opportunities for them throughout the regular season, but wasn’t able to produce. So he made working on his ball skills a priority this offseason.
A low production rookie season isn't sticky
During Monday’s practice, Quinyon Mitchell picked off Jalen Hurts, and in Tuesday’s press conference, Vic Fangio was asked about Mitchell improving his ball skills.
We have our first interception of #Eagles training camp. Quinyon Mitchell came up with an underthrown desperation heave from Jalen Hurts to AJ Brown during team.
— EJ Smith (@EJSmith94) July 28, 2025
Fangio said, “Yeah, I think it can improve obviously with work, and I think the work he’s put in has made it. He has improved. He had a nice interception yesterday, which I don’t know if he [would have made it] last year, but ball skills are a natural thing, too, so the improvement you can make is incremental, but any improvement he can make, he’ll make because he’ll work at it.” (7:07 in the video below)
I trust anything that Vic Fangio says. If he told me the secret to a long life is drinking three Dr. Peppers a day, then I’ll beeline to the grocery store. If he told me that he only uses the metric system, then I’ll switch all my thermometers to Celsius. If he says that everyone naturally has a different level of ball skills that can be improved with practice, then that’s the truth.
Quinyon Mitchell was asked about the work that he’s been putting into improving his ball skills: “I’ve been working this offseason on them. Every day before we go out to practice, I do something with our strength coach… They got some computer screen, so just tracking it. And then you got this little thing where you throw it up, and they name a color, and I just catch the color… It’s like red, yellow, and blue. They’re all thrown up at the same time.” (7:45 in the video below)
I don’t quite understand what that looks like, but it sounds like it’s a mix between an Ivan Drago workout and a Rocky Balboa workout. That’s a good mix.
He also went on to say that this is the first time that he’s ever really worked on his ball skills. If he’s already where he’s at and working produces “incremental” improvements, we’re in for one hell of a year from CB1.
Now, we know that Quinyonamo Bay has the potential to be an All-Pro this season. So I went back and looked on Pro Football Reference to see how some of the best cornerbacks over the last five seasons improved, interception-wise, from their quiet rookie seasons to their first All-Pro season.
Jaylon Johnson was targeted 78 times and had zero interceptions during his 2020 rookie season with the Bears. His All-Pro season was in 2023, where he had four interceptions off of just 58 targets (7% of the targets were interceptions). Rookie Tyrique Stevenson was the corner on the other side of the field during that season, and he got targeted 116 times.
That seems like it might be comparable to what Mitchell’s going to be dealing with this season. Adoree’ Jackson or Kelee Ringo is going to be the other cornerback; any smart offense is going to be peppering either of those guys over CB1.
The Falcons’ A.J. Terrell is also comparable. In his 2020 rookie season, he was targeted 106 times and had one interception. He was an All-Pro in his second year when he was targeted 86 times and had three interceptions. That means he went from an interception rate of 0.9% to 2.3% off 20 fewer passes than his rookie year.
James Bradberry is another player who went from a small number of interceptions off a big number of targets in his rookie season to a relatively big number of interceptions off a relatively small number of targets in his All-Pro season. In 2018 with the Panthers, he had one interception off 113 targets (.9%), and in 2022 with the Eagles, he had three interceptions off 86 targets (3.5%).
That 2022 season for Bradberry was special (until it wasn’t), but from 2019 to 2021, he had interception rates of 3.1%, 3.3%, and 3.4%.
The point of all this is that proof of growth is there and if Vic Fangio is right, which he probably definitely is, the Quinyon Mitchell’s offseason work is going to pay off. He had two interceptions off of 20 targets in the postseason. That’s a 10% interception rate; that’s All-Pro stuff.