Coverage Ability

The Panthers put a significant amount of pressure on their deep safeties in terms of their ability to process what’s happening in front of them, and this is an area where CGJ really impressed. Even on simple examples, he showed a level of discipline that the Panthers haven’t been able to rely upon in recent years, such as the following roll-out:

Here, he recognizes both the pursuit from the edge and the defender slipping into the backfield and moves to take away the dump-off option, allowing Polite to pressure the quarterback. However, where this is really valuable is when it comes to patrolling the middle of the field. This isn’t how CGJ was used at Florida in 2018, but he was used like this in 2017 – so there is enough evidence on tape to have some confidence in his ability to play in this way. However, the first example of this ability to process came on the following play from 2018:

It is hard to overstate how impressive this play is, as having started off covering in the slot, he passes his man off to the safety but then reads where the quarterback is planning on going with the ball and breaks to the backside routes. If this had been as far as he’d got with things, it would still be a very impressive play based on how he was able to read the quarterback and the routes combination, but when you combine that with the speed to cover the distance, the awareness of space to take a direct line to the catch point and the ball skills to come down with the interception and you have a play that very few NFL safeties are capable of, let alone college ones. Oh fine, we can watch it again…

When you go back and watch his tape playing the deep middle in 2017, this same ability shows up time and again. On the following play, he shows a clear ability to track the eyes of the quarterback and, once again, the range and ball skills to turn that processing ability into an interception:

This is a highly impressive exercise not only of athleticism and ball skills – but also of spatial reasoning. The reason why he is able to make a play on the ball here is not just due to his ability to cover the necessary ground, but also because of the angle which he takes to the ball. If he’d gone a bit lower, he’d have risked the ball going over his head and if he’d gone any higher, he’d risk missing out on the play; instead, he meets the ball at the optimal point, allowing for the interception.

It would be remiss of me to fail to mention that in the games I watched, there was one instance of a miscommunication between him and another defender:

It is really hard with the tape available to know who made the mistake, and if this is something that shows up more consistently in his remaining tape, this is something that teams should be aware of – in terms of his ability to process reads, the biggest and only real issue is the fact that he didn’t spend 2018 playing in the same role as he likely will in 2019, but while the transition back to deep safety might not be seamless, the fact that he played the role well in 2017 should reassure most evaluators.

Oh, and if you needed more evidence, he has good ball skills: