Pass Defense
As mentioned towards the start of this piece, Reid was signed by the Panthers originally and then re-signed this past offseason primarily because of who he is as a run defender, with his pass defense being good, but not something that had really stood out massively in San Francisco. He hadn’t been a vulnerability in pass coverage, and has usually been in the right place with the ability to make the odd play on the ball – but he wasn’t seen as the second coming of Ed Reed, even if their names are quite similar. This seems largely to have continued to be the case in Carolina, but there are some things in the details that merit closer inspection.
The most basic form of coverage for box safeties like Reid is underneath zone, and for the more limited players of this type, this is the extent of their usage – but Reid still shows the ability to move laterally and vertically in space, read the quarterback and make the tackle on the receiver to limit yards after the catch:
Yes, there are players who are better at this than Reid, and no, this doesn’t add a huge amount of value – but he shows a consistent ability to execute as required underneath as part of the defense. Of course, teams don’t want to just play zone every snap, so Reid has also been asked to play some man coverage for the Panthers.
Here, he has had some solid plays:
And some really very good plays:
And while he didn’t do a great job of getting his head around and locating the ball on the following touchdown, he did a good job of staying with what is a very good receiving tight end through the route – a less perfect ball from Brees could well have fallen incomplete:
However, playing him in off-man against one of the better receiving backs in the NFL probably isn’t a great idea:
Reid isn’t some lockdown man coverage box safety, but he can play a high quality of man coverage against most tight ends and if he is the weakest link in your defense in man coverage, you probably aren’t doing too badly. With that said, he is a player you need to be careful about using in terms of matchup, as while he is technically solid in this regard, 215 pound safeties generally aren’t going to fare greatly when asked to play man against more athletic running backs and tight ends.
Of course, there are going to be situations where Reid is asked to play slightly further away from the line of scrimmage; fortunately, he has shown some real ability in intermediate coverage. This obviously puts slightly more on his plate than underneath zone, but he has consistently shown great awareness of where his help is and what his role in the defense requires. He shows a really nice understanding of where his help leverage is, working outside of receivers when he has inside help:
And staying underneath defenders when he knows he has help over the top in an attempt to force the quarterback into taking a risk by trying to fit the ball between him and the help safety:
He also shows a good feel for what the offense is trying to do against him in such coverage, such as on the following play where he initially works down in order to take away a potential route to Adams over the middle for the field, but when Adams breaks outside, he works back deep in order to take away the intermediate route that would otherwise have come open behind him:
This is all extremely useful when the Panthers are in any form of single high safety zone coverage such as Cover 1 or Cover 3, but the biggest issue comes when the Panthers look to play Cover 2. The Panthers don’t play a ton of it, but this is clearly not an insignificant part of what they do defensively – so how Reid performs in this coverage is important to the Panthers. On the whole, he actually hasn’t been terrible, as while he doesn’t have the kind of closing speed and range you would look for in a typical deep field safety, he does a decent job of breaking on the ball, reacting to what is in front of him and preventing yards after the catch:
However, he is going to struggle to stop pure speed receivers from getting over the top of him:
That is unless he works very deep indeed, which also has some downsides:
In reality, the Panthers haven’t actually played a ton of Cover 2 outside of the game against the Saints – if this is something the Panthers are going to do a lot of going forward, the brutal truth is that Reid just isn’t a great fit for a defense that wants to do that. However, seeing that Cover 2 is more generally used as a defense that teams only use in obvious passing situations due to the issues it causes against the run, the reality is that the Panthers just shouldn’t use Reid in this way in these situations – they need to either play him underneath or take him off the field completely.
If at this point, you are wondering why you haven’t seen the long pass allowed to Ginn or the near-miss from later on in the Saints game, that’s because these are two great examples of the biggest issue with Reid’s pass coverage – it mostly comes down to how the Panthers have been using him. On both plays, as well as a similar one against the Packers, the Panthers line up with two deep safeties, where Reid is in some form of deep zone coverage. This isn’t a great use of Reid but sure, if the pass rush is able to apply some pressure, he has enough speed to prevent any deep routes from getting over the top of him. However…
The issue here is not just that the Panthers aren’t able to get quick pressure, but that with Boston being either pushed deeper or pulled shorter by routes on the other side of the field, Reid isn’t able to pass the receiver over when they cut inside, and so he is now essentially left isolated in effective man coverage deep against a receiver with a significant run-up, and while against Graham, he has enough speed and talent to prevent him from getting away, when you ask him to run across the field against Ted Ginn, there’s only going to be one outcome.
In short, this really isn’t on Reid as a player – it’s more of a risk you take by playing this sort of coverage and aren’t able to get quick pressure. Reid is good enough as a run defender and in short and intermediate coverage that the answer to this problem is likely just to limit how much you ask him to play in two-deep safety coverages and to just accept that when you do, there is going to be a risk involved should the offensive be able to isolate him against a receiver.
On the plus side, however, Reid does some nice things as a blitzer:
In fact, the only coverage play where it appears he may have made a significant error – as opposed to simply just not being a cornerback – was on the following touchdown where he initially bites down on the run fake allowing the receiver to get behind him:
Even here, it is far from clear whether the mistake is by him or Donte Jackson, as it is likely that one of them would have been expected to have stayed down with the running back, just not both of them.
The Panthers defense has truly not lived up to expectations, and while Reid certainly has things he could continue to work on – most notably the consistency of his tackling technique – it would be hard to say that he has played poorly so far this season; certainly not in the last three games. Like most players, Reid has his limitations – the more time he spends in and around the box and the less he spends in deep coverage the better – but Reid is far from a pure run-stuffer, with enough athleticism in space to cover most tight ends and running backs in man coverage and the awareness and movement skills to be an effective zone defender in underneath or intermediate coverage.
He’s not a star, but still at only 27 years old, Reid could be a really useful foundation piece going forward in the right scheme.
