Bears Safety with Cornerback Potential
The answer to all Bears personnel problems in the secondary seems to be competition.
They're taking the offensive line approach and throwing a group of defensive backs into the mix to see who pops out as replacements for Kyle Fuller and Buster Skrine.
A great deal of faith is being put into veteran acquisition Desmond Trufant at left cornerback.
"You have a Pro Bowl-caliber player with Desmond Trufant who wasn't happy with how his season ended last year," Bears defensive backs coach Deshea Townsend said.
The pecking order at slot cornerback is less certain.
Kindle Vildor and Artie Burns were thrown out by Townsend as other names in the mix to replace Kyle Fuller.
At slot cornerback, Vildor, Duke Shelley and rookie Thomas Graham Jr. have been mentioned by coaches as potential starting combatants. Since none have done it on a full-time basis in the NFL, there must be some question whether they actually can.
"I think Kindle showed that he belongs in this league last year in the reps that he took last year," defensive coordinator Sean Desai said. "So I think he's going to have a chance to compete at various positions.
"The good thing about the way, our teaching philosophy is we try to make sure guys know multiple spots. That helps us on game day with the depth and that's been a philosophy of mine and our defensive staff since the beginning. So we're going to have a lot of competition at the nickel, as well."
Desai brought up the name of a potential stop-gap situation, or someone on the roster who has played the position in a few tough situations with players down in games during the past.
It's the guy who will wear jersey No. 4 and that's not Graham, who wore the number in college at Oregon.
"We've had guys that have played there in games in terms of Duke and even DHC (safety DeAndre Houston-Carson) has played in games," Desai said. "Eddie Jackson has played in games in that position."
Jackson switched from No. 39 to No. 4 for this season, the number he wore at Alabama. He still is a safety as far as Desai is concerned and hasn't switched positions but has done it a few times in an emergency.
"And I'm not saying he's going to play there but we've had enough competition at those positions that we've got enough depth where we'll be able to solve that problem," Desai said. "It's a good problem to have because when it's an open competition I think you get the best out of all the players on your roster."
Coach Matt Nagy has said he has confidence in Desai and Townsend to find an answer among young players at the nickel cornerback spot because both have experience training players in the slot.
If they had problems finding someone, would Jackson be a terrible alternative?
Plenty of teams use starting cornerbacks on the outside who move into the slot in passing situations and are replaced on the outside by someone else.
The Vikings did this last year. The Bears did something similar to it briefly in 2019 with Kevin Toliver when Prince Amukamara was injured. They put Toliver on the field at outside cornerback in passing situations and had Skrine in his customary slot position. When they played the base package, Skrine moved to the outside and the less experienced Toliver came off the field.
This only happened briefly, though. It wasn't expected to be a long-term solution.
So what if the Bears put Jackson and his coverage skills into the slot on passing downs and brought someone else on at safety?
At least they'd know they have a proven coverage player manning the position. He was a cornerback before becoming a safety at Alabama, though not necessarily in the slot.
Before the Bears did this, they'd have to be convinced putting one of the backup safeties into Jackson's normal position would be preferable to using either Shelley, Graham or Vildor in the slot.
They then could move in either Deon Bush, DeAndre Houston-Carson, Marqui Christian or Jordan Lucas to Jackson's normal safety position. Bush and Houston-Carson both got into dime coverage packages last year at times, and made their first career interceptions.
Christian has played more on defense in the NFL than any of those players. He was on the field for 34% of the defensive snaps as a safety for the Rams in 2018 and 2019 and in his career has played 768 snaps. Bush has been on the field for 695 defensive snaps, Lucas 262 and Houston-Carson 164. All of those players except Houston-Carson have more NFL defensive snaps logged than Shelley, Vildor and Graham do.
If inexperience fails the Bears at slot cornerback, the baseline could be a coverage player with unquestioned skills while using a less effective safety to team in back with Tashaun Gipson.
It's been pointed out over the last two seasons that teams throw away from Jackson.
Last year opponents threw short middle 158 times, the most of any area, but they threw short left and short right nearly as much. All told it was 452 times in short middle left or right against the Bears defense, according to NFLGSIS statistics. They threw deeper passes only 92 times on the Bears.
If Jackson played in the shorter areas and the Bears had an alternative deeper, it could actually mean more plays on the ball for him.
It's only a backup plan and not something they would even want to do.
But like Desai said, it never hurts to have players prepared for all alternatives.
Besides, when a player is so good at making plays on the ball and he's not getting enough passes thrown his way, there are worse ways to make sure he gets more opportunities at interceptions.
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