Secondary a Primary Concern

[mlmpetert]

Originally Posted by SmootSmack

Instead they chose Cedric Griffin, with the expectation that he'll primarily line up opposite Josh Wilson with DeAngelo Hall in the nickel replacing Kevin Barnes.

On average, starting corners I believe get about 20-25% more snaps than the nickel. To be clear though, I suspect that Hall will largely be the starter but when a nickel situation is called for, Cedric won't come in to play nickel he'll come in to replace Hall and Hall slides to cover the slot receiver. We'll know for sure soon enough.

First ill state that its always been hard for me to decipher exactly what we are doing defensively. It became a lot harder since we switched to the 3-4 with Hasslett using seemingly much more complicated packages and having people all over the place disguising coverage. And of course TV cameras dont do a great job of showing coverage on the live play. Maybe the NFL showing all 22 angels will help me in time.

With that said I always thought what you stated would would be the best way to use Hall. The way he plays and his size / abilities seem best suited as a nickelback to me, yet considering our short comings at corner you want him on the field as much as possible (well, sometimes....) .

So is that the prevailing thought, that Hall is best suited as a nickel? Does anyone know about how often we shifted Hall into the nickel last year and how well it seemed to work? Any other teams that do this (the "number 1" corner shifts to nickel) as regular thing?