Here’s How Kirksey Could Change Defense
GREEN BAY, Wis. – Last season, Mike Pettine’s Green Bay Packers defense lined up with six-plus defensive backs on a league-high 52 percent of the snaps, according to Sports Info Solutions.
With that, there are two questions worth considering with the 2020 season barely three weeks away. One, is that simply the way Pettine prefers to line up in response to today’s NFL, with more offenses leaning toward spreading the field than using brute force? Or was that the way he was forced to line up because his linebackers were such liabilities in coverage?
Pettine wouldn’t answer that question on Friday, but he did say new linebacker Christian Kirksey would be an asset in coverage.
“For sure, that’s one of his better traits is his ability in coverage,” Pettine said on Friday as part of the accompanying video. “Coming out of Iowa when I was at Cleveland and we drafted him, it was actually difficult to evaluate him as an inside linebacker [because] he played so much out of the box. We knew he could cover because he was out on the slot a lot; he was covering wide receivers. That’s a part of his skill-set.”
Nobody in the NFL made more tackles than Blake Martinez the past three seasons but wasn’t much of a threat in coverage. The past two seasons, Martinez had one interception and broke up five passes in 32 games. Kirksey, who missed most of the previous two seasons with injuries, had two interceptions and five passes defensed in seven games in 2018.
Already in training camp, he has one interception and a snap of impressive deep coverage on Aaron Jones.
“Christian’s played a lot of football and seen a lot of football, so his feel in coverage is good,” inside linebackers coach Kirk Olivadotti said on Friday. “He does have a good feel for routes and things that are around him. That’s a thing that comes with experience and also just having a feel for those kinds of things. Even at Iowa, he was a guy that played a lot in space and had to feel things around him. He’s been doing that kind of thing for a long time – probably since he was a teenager.”
With Martinez flanked mostly by Antonio Morrison in 2018 and B.J. Goodson in 2019, the Packers had two guys with coverage limitations. If Kirksey can stay healthy, he could change the dynamic of the defense. Potentially, having one linebacker capable of matching pass-catching backs would allow Pettine to play more traditional defenses. That, in turn, could improve the run defense.
Pettine, for obvious reasons, wouldn’t spill the beans on his thinking. Rather, he said it will be a week-to-week deal of finding the best personnel.
“As always, as we start to prepare for a game, we’ll look at it as, ‘Hey, what do we need to take away from this team? What’s our best unit to do that? Who are our best 11?’ And if it involves playing two linebackers and that’s our best 11, and that matches up well against the groupings they’re in, that’s what we’ll be in. It’s certainly a tremendous benefit for us to have a linebacker who has his type of coverage ability.”
