Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Packer Plus
Packers plotting how to utilize Alexander
Palm Beach, Fla. – If you’re wondering how the Green Bay Packers are likely to use Jaire Alexander now that they’ve re-signed Rasul Douglas, the example to look to is Jalen Ramsey.
Ramsey is the player Alexander is shooting to supplant as the NFL’s highest-paid cornerback and happens to play in the same defensive system as Alexander. Joe Barry, the Packers’ defensive coordinator, brought that scheme to the Packers from the Los Angeles Rams after working for a season for defensive prodigy Brandon Staley, who has since become the Los Angeles Chargers’ head coach.
Ramsey was hardly the Rams’ primary slot cornerback the last two seasons, but he played there regularly, sometimes more, sometimes less, based on game plans and matchups week to week. In 2020, he played nickel about 18% of his defensive snaps, and last year about 31%, according to Pro Football Focus.
The best guess is that’s how Barry will use Alexander. Matching him with the best receiver all over the field in some games, playing him more in the slot in others.
“When you have special players like that, that’s kind of the thought process,” Staley said of Ramsey, though he could have been talking about Alexander too.
How Barry will deploy his cornerbacks is a big question in the Packers’ offseason now that they’ve re-signed Douglas, the godsend they plucked off Arizona’s practice squad last October after Alexander’s shoulder injury that sidelined him until the playoffs.
The Packers now are as strong at the top three cornerbacks as they’ve been in a long time with Alexander, Douglas and Eric Stokes. But all three have been predominantly outside cornerbacks, so to get them on the field together in nickel defense, which the Packers play most of the time, Barry has to decide who plays in the slot, and when.
Alexander is best suited for the job physically, because he’s the smaller, quick cover man teams look for in a
nickel back. In the slot, coverage players don’t have the sideline to protect them, so they have to defend against quick receivers who might break left or right.
But Alexander has made his bones playing outside and also had the serious shoulder injury sustained while making a head-on tackle. In the nickel position he’d be lined up almost like a linebacker and in the middle of the team’s run defense taking on blockers and tackling running backs on early downs. The Packers might not want to play him there too much for fear the pounding will shorten his time as a premier player at a premium position.
Alexander isn’t exactly small at 196 pounds, but he’s not as big as Ramsey (208 pounds), who despite his height (a tallish 6-feet-1) is athletic enough to cover slot receivers.
“You have to have a frame that’s durable, strong enough to hold up,” Staley said.
But at least Alexander’s shoulder doesn’t appear to be the limiting factor it was late last season. Barry put him in the slot in the dime (four cornerbacks) for the eight snaps of Alexander’s return for the playoffs against San Francisco in January, and the cornerback looked painfully tentative on his missed tackle
on Deebo Samuels’ decisive nine-yard run that set up the game-winning field goal in the final seconds.
“It’s healed, it wouldn’t (be a factor),” general manager Brian Gutekunst said of Alexander’s shoulder at the NFL owners meetings this week. “But again, with Ja he’s going to go where some of the receivers go, he’s going to follow some of those guys, he can kind of do everything. That’s a nice luxury for us to have.”
The Packers theoretically have another candidate in safety Darnell Savage, who played a lot of nickel cornerback in college at Maryland and is a dynamic athlete who has shown some playmaking ability around the line of scrimmage.
But while the Packers keep saying Savage can play nickel — he did so only a handful of snaps last season — there’s no indication they’re going to use him there much. They could have planned to move him to that position this offseason and spent Douglas’ money ($7 million this year) on a safety, but they re-signed Douglas instead.
“(Savage) is so good at so many different things,” Gutekunst said, “and him and Adrian (Amos) complement each other so well. Certainly, having him come from a deeper level can give quarterbacks fits as well.”
While teams talk about the importance of the nickel job in today’s NFL, few do as Dom Capers did with the Packers from 2009-12 and put their best defensive back there. That’s when Charles Woodson manned the Packers’ nickel position, including when he won defensive player of the year in 2009. It’s no coincidence Capers called it the “star” position, as Staley and Barry do in their updated version of the scheme.
Maybe teams don’t do it simply because Woodson was a rare talent both physically capable of playing the position and weathering the beating, and mentally handing the cat-and-mouse battle with the quarterback. The Rams are an exception playing Ramsey in the slot more than occasionally, as is Staley by using his best defensive back (Derwin James) with the Chargers as a parttime nickel, though James is a safety/ linebacker by trade (215 pounds).
“It’s a position that’s really important in the league,” Staley said. “We view it as a starting position. We look at that position as somebody who can affect the coverage game, the blitz game, the underneath passing game, somebody’s who’s integral in your run front.”
In the end, Douglas could end up playing the nickel spot as much or more than anyone for the Packers, in part because Stokes’ elite speed (4.31 seconds) is made to play on the outside. Douglas has the physique (209 pounds) to hold up in the slot on early downs, but he’s mismatched for the position because his height (6-2) makes it harder to change directions as quickly as a smaller man.
“I think his instincts and his ability to anticipate make up for a little bit of that,” Gutekunst said.
Said coach Matt LaFleur: “The objective is to get the best 11 on the field.”
LaFleur’s comment is probably most relevant here. The Packers think they’ll be better with Douglas on the field, even at the nickel, than they were with Chandon Sullivan as their primary No. 3 last year.
It’s now on Joe Barry to make that right.