- Jun 9, 2014
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Founding Member
he played okay as a nickel corner. maybe good, although frankly his coverage wasn't spectacular. but I'm not going to argue about levels of good related to that. I will concede your point for the argument. Chauncey has easily been our best nickel corner. but that's not what I'm talking about.
what I'm talking about that is the position itself replaces one of the outside linebackers in our so called 34 defense. formationally this often means that our nickel/star has to move in the box and be the outside linebacker depending on what the offense does. that sometimes includes setting the edge versus the offensive line.
none of our stars, including chauncey, have even been even mediocre playing in the box as a substitute linebacker. realistically that can't be done. you can pick somebody that's a linebacker safety hybrid. or you can pick somebody that's a safety cornerback hybrid, but there's no such thing as a linebacker safety cornerback hybrid. you're always giving up. in our case we're really just playing cornerbacks, even our safeties are basically cornerbacks. we don't even play a heavy safety/strong safety.
everyone plays a nickel corner (or dime)at some point. but most teams play an outside linebacker the majority of the time and substitute the nickel situationally. those that do play five defensive backs as a base package usually have somebody that's more of a safety linebacker hybrid (again think Black or Burney) so the defense is not so weak. we can't really do that because our choice to take all responsibilities except blitz away from the Rush end and frequent additional blitzes mean all the defensive backs are in man with only one high or often zero high.
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