Cornerbacks are among the most important players in the NFL and have the unenviable task of facing a minuscule margin for error on every snap, having to stop some of the best athletes in the league at wide receiver while also needing to outsmart the quarterbacks throwing the ball in their vicinity.

In their storied history, the Las Vegas Raiders have had a handful of true shutdown cornerbacks and many more underrated standouts across from them who were capable of either making big plays on the ball, bumping off the run, or playing at a high level against the No. 2 guys.

Narrowing down the list to 10 was not easy, but here are the 10 best Las Vegas Raiders cornerbacks in NFL and AFL history – a list that includes a handful of the greatest corners to ever play this game.

10. Lionel Washington

In more recent years, Stanford Routt was one of the more underrated cornerbacks in the NFL while playing across from Nnamdi Asomugha, in the shadow of one of the league’s best, but in the 90s, it was Lionel Washington who was holding down the fort for a decade as the highly underrated partner for ballhawk Terry McDaniel in the late 80s and early 90s.

Washington didn’t have the gaudy interception totals and pick-sixes of McDaniel, but he still amassed 19 interceptions in 9 seasons for the Raiders, including 5 picks in the 1991 NFL season.

He didn’t make any Pro Bowls, but Washington was beloved by Raiders fans who watched him in the 90s for his consistency and ability to neutralize threats. Even at the time, many fans thought Washington should have been recognized more, but Raiders fans will remember him as a top-notch cornerback in their history.

9. Fred Williamson

Nicknamed “The Hammer”, Fred Williamson is one of the most underrated undrafted success stories in NFL history, and although he only actually played a few years for the Raiders in the AFL, he was a three-time AFL All Star in every single season, intercepting eight passes in his best season.

Williamson played the game a rough way in the early 60s, literally hammering opposing wide receivers in the head, and his success on the field and notorious toughness made him a perfect star in Hollywood.

8. Terry McDaniel

Terry McDaniel played for the Los Angeles and Oakland Raiders from 1988 to 1997, earning five straight Pro Bowls at the peak of his powers while being a First Team All-Pro in the 1993 NFL season.

The Raiders cornerback is one of a few successful defensive backs at the NFL level on this list to have played on offense, and those skills suited him well as a ball-hawking cornerback who left the Raiders as their all-time leader in pick-sixes.

McDaniel had five straight seasons with at least four interceptions in a single season, making the Pro Bowl in each of those campaigns. He achieved all this after a major injury in his rookie season.

A nightmare for opposing quarterbacks, McDaniel earned a reputation in the 90s for being the guy who could pick off any quarterback in the league, regularly making the likes of Drew Bledsoe and John Elway look foolish with his interceptions.

7. Kent McCloughan

An AFL Champion for the Oakland Raiders in 1967, Kent McCloughan only knew the Silver and Black, playing for pro football’s most storied western franchise from 1965 to 1970 in a career that was short but very sweet.

McCloughan was a two-time First Team All-AFL player and made the Second Team another time, and if it were not for knee injuries cutting his career short, the hard-nosed corner could have ended up in the top five of this list.

Arguably, he was even better at shutting down No. 1 receivers than Willie Brown, as the duo perfected the bump-and-run technique, frustrating the league’s best wideouts as the dominant cornerback force in league history before Lester Hayes and Mike Haynes came along.

6. Dave Grayson

Because Dave Grayson played in the 1960s and in the AFL, most football fans today have never heard of this guy, but like many of the other great Raiders cornerbacks on this list, he was a pioneer of the position and an elite player in his day.

A two-time AFL Champion, winning one of those with the Raiders, Grayson earned three of his four career First-Team All-Pro nods in his five seasons in Oakland, and while he effectively split those years at cornerback and safety after switching positions in 1967, he was still undoubtedly a world-class cornerback. And in case you didn’t know, he was the all-time AFL leader in interceptions with 47.

5. Charles Woodson

Charles Woodson played for the Oakland Raiders in two separate stints in the 2000s and 2010s decades, winning a Super Bowl with the Green Bay Packers sandwiched in between.

Like Nnamdi Asomugha, Woodson wasn’t just a shutdown cornerback. He was an intelligent leader who was not afraid to come up and make big tackles in the running game, and he was also capable of changing games with his playmaking ability on the ball.

Woodson’s Defensive Player of the Year nod in 2009 came with the Packers when they won the Super Bowl, but he did win Defensive Rookie of the Year honors in Cali and was a two-time First Team All-Pro and two-time Second Team All-Pro for the Raiders, including, remarkably enough, in his final NFL season in 2015 when he was nearly 40 years old.

It is rare for a cornerback to have his career span decades like that and to remain one of the league’s best players, but that’s how respected Woodson was and how uniquely great he was at every single little aspect of cornerback play, down to tackling and even blitzing. No player in Raiders history has more career passes defended or fumbles forced than Woodson.

4. Nnamdi Asomugha

Although Nnamdi Asomugha somewhat tarnished his overall Hall of Fame legacy by never quite cutting it outside of Oakland, ending his career as a monumental free agent flop with the Philadelphia Eagles, those peak years he had with the Raiders were truly special.

Prime Nnamdi is the greatest shutdown corner we have ever seen, making the stuff Darrelle Revis and Richard Sherman were doing look like child’s play. It is not an exaggeration to say that nobody – not a single soul – had Nnamdi’s number, and the joke that the rest of the earth not covered by water was covered by Nnamdi seemed quite serious at the time.

Nnamdi had mirroring technique down to an art, and he struck fear in the cockiest of wide receivers like Chad Ochocinco to the point where you almost felt abd for whichever poor soul was about to get sucked into the Black Hole that was Asomugha’s coverage.

He didn’t even need to defend passes or try to intercept at a certain point, because there was just no point in challenging Nnamdi’s speed and physicality. In 2006 when quarterbacks were none the wiser and actually trying to challenge Asomugha, he ended up with eight interceptions, exploding onto the scene as one of the NFL’s best players at any position.

Asomugha finished his Raiders career in 2010 with two First Team All-Pro selections and a reputation for being both the smartest and fastest defensive player in the league, spoken in hushed tones and revered by every single rival defensive coordinator as an example for their players to follow.

3. Mike Haynes

One of the several true shutdown cornerbacks in the hallowed history of the Raiders, Mike Haynes won the Super Bowl with Los Angeles in 1984 in his first season with the team, lifting them up with his ability to take an opponent’s best receiver completely out of the game.

Prior to joining the Raiders, Haynes had already established himself as one of the best corners in the game with the New England Patriots, making the Pro Bowl in each of his first five seasons and then in 1982 the year before moving out west to L.A.

Haynes reached his peak with the Raiders in the 1984 and 1985 seasons, earning back-to-back First Team All-Pro nods. He and Lester Hayes formed what is unequivocally the greatest cornerback tandem of all time, as both men were equally. capable of shutting down shop and playing the position at an elite level.

Hence, Washington stood no chance against Los Angeles in the Super Bowl, with Haynes picking off a pass and playing a perfect game against Joe Theismann, as Washington tried to pick on him but were wholly unsuccessful in doing so.

2. Willie Brown

Willie Brown is unequivocally one of the greatest Raiders of all time and one of the greatest playmaking and shutdown cornerbacks rolled in one, and it is a shame that most young fans these days don’t realize how great some of the cornerbacks of the past, like Brown, were.

A former Super Bowl champion and two-time First Team All-Pro, Brown seemed to elevate his game in the biggest moments, recording a trio of pick-sixes across his career in the postseason.

Brown epitomized the professionalism and swagger of the 70s Raiders. He never took plays off, he could go toe-to-toe with any wide receiver in the league of the time, and when the occasion called for a big play, Brown was there to ballhawk and change the course of the game.

From 1967 to 1978, Brown recorded at least three interceptions in eight different seasons, and there is no question that he is one of the greatest defensive players to ever play this sport.

1. Lester Hayes

The most dominant half of one of the greatest cornerback duos of all time alongside Mike Haynes, Lester Hayes was an interception maven and a corner who was not afraid to bring the hit stick on opposing receivers, perfectly encapsulating the Raider Way.

A smashmouth cornerback, Hayes won two Super Bowls with the Raiders, including in 1980 when he also won the Defensive Player of the Year – which is not an easy feat for a defensive back – after recording an insane 13 interceptions in a single season, kicking off a run of five straight Pro Bowls.

Although Hayes never had more than three interceptions in a single season thereafter and thus never earned another First Team All-Pro nod, that had more to do with the ignorance of the voters and the fickle nature of statistics for corners.

Like Nnamdi Asomugha ahead of him in Raiders history, Hayes hurt his own numbers by being so good at locking down not just the top receiver but an entire side of the field that opposing quarterbacks, including the greatest passers of all time, just didn’t even bother trying to challenge him at all anywhere near his zip code.

Deion Sanders, Darrelle Revis, and pretty much every other great cornerback in NFL history, especially the most physical ones who play up at the line of scrimmage, can go back and thank Hayes for setting the table for greatness at the position.