If you were to create the ideal secondary for the modern NFL, most likely that secondary would have at least five pass defenders in its base coverages. Adding that slot defender, whether it’s a cornerback or a safety in “big nickel” (three-safety) packages, is a must against today’s 3×1 receiver sets. You’d also want outside cornerbacks who can play press-man coverage against an opponent’s top receivers, and safeties who don’t live by the old free and strong designations.
In this week’s edition of “The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” Greg (of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup) and Doug (of Touchdown Wire) endeavor to build the perfect modern secondary, starting with the ideal traits for every position.
Let’s break that down, from cornerback to slot defender to safety.
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The ideal cornerback.
Building the perfect cornerback for 2023 and beyond requires that this hypothetical cornerback play man coverage right out of the box. As we discussed on the show last week, there’s one reason for this: The increasing use of quick game by NFL offenses.
“You would start with the idea that he has to play man coverage,” Greg said. “If he cannot play man coverage, he cannot play cornerback at a high level in the National Football League. Now, there are multiple ways to play man coverage. It doesn’t always have to be press; you can play off-man, as well. The increasing use of quick game, and the increasing use of the RPO, which is basically another form of quick game with an added element to it… the need to play press has increased in the league. With quick game, the ball comes out of the quarterback’s hand in anywhere from 1.5 to 1.7 seconds from the time of the snap, and the pass rush isn’t going to get there. So, you’re not going to affect the quarterback — you need to impact the receivers.”
Which is one reason offenses are using so much pre-snap motion these days — to take aggressive press coverage out of the equation. But this isn’t the only thing the modern cornerback must do at a consistently high rate.
“One of the things you see a lot of in the NFL is 3×1 sets,” Greg continued. “Meaning that there’s three receivers to one side, and a single receiver to the short side of the field. More often than not, that receiver is a wide receiver — what we call the ‘Boundary X.’ You need a cornerback who can match up to the Boundary X receiver, man-to-man with theoretically no help. It doesn’t happen like that 100% of the time — nothing does — but there will be situations in which that cornerback will be playing man coverage with no help. Basically, it’s Cover-0.”
One of the reasons that Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner of the Jets won the Defensive Rookie of the Year award was his ability to click and close on iso receivers with three receivers to the other side without any safety help. This deflection of a Josh Allen deep pass to receiver John Brown in Week 14. Gardner is one of the few NFL cornerbacks with just about every attribute you want at the position.
The ideal slot defender.
Obviously, your slot defenders need to be able to cover slot receivers — or outside receivers on switches inside. But as Greg points out, there’s more to the position than just coverage.
“Slot defenders are an interesting breed. They can come in all shapes and sizes. They can be smaller, like Mike Hilton, who I think is one of the best slot defenders in the league. They can be bigger; it depends on what you want. But think of it this way — I know the numbers might be going down a bit, but teams line up in 11 personnel [one running back, one tight end, three receivers] a majority of the time. And teams are playing out of 11 personnel on first down — on second-and-3. What we consider normal down-and-distance situations where the run game is part of the offense. It’s not jst a third-down situation.
“Your slot defender is not just a pass defender. Your slot defender has to be able to defend the run, because there are a lot of teams that run toward the slot defender, because they know he’s not as good a run defender as you’d see running to the other side, where you might have bigger bodies. He also has to be part of pressure schemes. How often do we see slot defenders in today’s NFL as blitzers?
“So, not only do you have to play man coverage against receivers who have a two-way go, you also have to play underneath zone coverage, which is different than playing underneath zone coverage if you’re an outside cornerback. There are different rules, because zones all have their own rules.”
Mike Hilton of the Bengals is one of those do-it-all guys. Not only does he excel in coverage, but he’s also capable of working against the run, and — as he showed on this sack against the Ravens in the wild-card round of the playoffs last season.
The ideal safety.
In today’s NFL, the delineation between the strong (shallow) and free (deep) safety has disappeared to a large degree. The days of one safety as the headhunter at linebacker depth, and one patrolling the deep third almost exclusively, are gone. Now, teams want safeties that are as interchangeable as possible.
“You don’t want to get stuck with the idea that only one safety can play on the back end, and one safety can only play on the line of scrimmage,” Greg said. “You become very predictable defensively if that’s the case. In an ideal world, in today’s NFL, you would like your safeties to be interchangeable. First of all, you’re going to play a lot of Quarters [Cover-4] looks, but you don’t want to give the offense a tell. You don’t want them to know that, ‘Hey — this guy is going to do one thing, and this guy is going to do another.’
“Plus, you want to be in a situation ideally — and this is hard — where either safety can match up to the tight end. Because the tight end has become a critical piece in the pass game today. That’s one of the things you think about when you watch college safeties on tape — does this guy have the physical and athletic traits, no matter what he’s asked to do in college, to match up in man coverage to quality receiving tight ends who are bit and athletic?”
Also in today’s NFL — and in the college game — if you’re not an Ed Reed or Earl Thomas in the deep third, you’re going to be playing serious reps at slot, even if you’re thought to be a safety.
“It also has to do with the increasing use of motion,” Greg concluded. “How do you want your safeties to deal with that? You don’t want to get stuck where it’s, ‘Oh my God, they’re using motion, and we can’t adjust to anything or communicate, because we don’t feel good about our safeties’ ability to do something.”
Minkah Fitzpatrick of the Steelers recently finished first in our list of the NFL’s 11 best safeties, and while there are all kinds of reasons for that, his ability to discern what’s going on all over the field, and to react to it in real time, sets him apart. Against the Falcons in Week 13, Fitzpatrick was in a deep Cover-2 look with fellow safety Damontae Kazee, and it was Fitzpatrick who deduced Marcus Mariota’s pass to Drake London, and it was Fitzpatrick who jumped the route and picked it off from another zip code.
