Slot Corner Becomes Need In Wake Of Ryan's Departure, Butler's Ambiguity

What makes an effective slot corner?

A better question may be, do the New England Patriots have one?

Also known as a nickel back, a slot corner is best described as a press-man cover who works best in tight spaces, plays the run like a linebacker, is more agile than fast with long arms and cat-quick reflexes and the instincts of a hammerhead shark. A slot corner must be dexterous enough to change direction in time to mirror shifty garden gnomes like Julian Edelman and T.Y. Hilton...

Jones' skill set makes him a viable slot candidate despite issues as rookie

...while being long enough to get their arms around taller men playing out of the slot to knock the ball away from them - it is truly a combination of athleticism and physical make up that is rare - and even more rare is the guy who can play inside out, pressing from the slot and playing trail technique, vertically, to the sidelines.

In many ways, a slot corner's job is more difficult than a traditional outside-the-numbers corner, and the 2014 post-season gives us decent example of how rare this cover corner truly is.

In the AFC Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts, then-Patriots' slot corner Kyle Arrington shut down the Colts' speedy slot man T.Y. Hilton, allowing just one reception on six targets by jamming Hilton at the line and not allowing him to release to the inside where he could rub out Arrington by taking him through traffic.  Instead, Arrington man-handled to demure Hilton and took him to the outside where the sidelines and over-the-top safety help were available.

But in the Super Bowl two weeks later, Arrington was absolutely abused by Seattle Seahawks' depth receiver Chris Matthews, as Matthews had seven inches in height and nine inches in reach on Arrington, who again played inside technique, but got toasted by the much bigger Matthews when the Seahawks had him release to the sidelines where he easily won 50-50 balls on his sheer height advantage.

So badly burned was Arrington that Patriots' head ball coach Bill Belichick removed his charred remains at halftime and inserted a little known undrafted free agent named Malcolm Butler in his stead.

The rest, as they say, is history.

In reality, Belichick switched things around after inserting Butler, and put uber-physical and much taller corner Brandon Browner on Matthews and lined Butler up with Jermaine Kearse on the outside where they both could match up better, though Browner and Butler would switch up on the last defensive play of the game, Browner jamming Kearse at the line of scrimmage to allow Butler to break on slot receiver Ricardo Lockette, intercepting the pass intended for Lockette and saving the Super Bowl for the Patriots.

Butler said in the weeks following that game that he didn't want to be remembered just for being the guy that made that play - that he didn't want to join the ranks of the "one hit wonders" that seem to make a play in the biggest of games, then fade in obscurity.  For sure, that has not been the case, as Butler has become one of the best corners in football, and is now embroiled in a contract dispute with New England.

Butler stands even shorter than Arrington, but has the fiestiness and competitiveness required of a press corner, and the requisite springs in his legs to challenge along the sidelines.  In that manner, Butler is the perfect slot corner, and it is that same nastiness and athleticism that makes him a pretty damn good wing corner as well - and maybe that's what Belichick was thinking when he brought in lengthy corner Stephon Gilmore from the Buffalo Bills.

Together with like-sized (6' 1") third-year man Eric Rowe, the Patriots suddenly have two big, capable fly corners, and having Butler play in the slot - the Patriots are primarily is a base nickel or Big Nickel about three-quarters of the time - would give New England one of the best, if not the best, corner tandems in the NFL.

Of course, having Butler in the slot plays right into his strengths, and would produce some eye-popping numbers insofar as passes defended, interceptions and tackles - he has the physicality, quick-twitch athleticism and jack-in-the-box springs to cover taller receivers without breaking stride, though many only look at his work on the outside as dismiss him as a capable - perhaps elite - slot corner.

Last season, the Patriots had Rowe and Butler on the outside with Logan Ryan in the slot to form one of the better secondaries in the league, but now that Ryan has gone on to play for the Tennessee Titans for $10 million a year, the cupboard is bare of proven slot corners.

The list of candidates that currently reside on the roster hardly causes opposing offensive coordinators sleepless nights, as names like Justin Coleman and Jonathan Jones are mainly special teamers and former second-round pick Cyrus Jones melted down like the wicked witch of the west in his rookie campaign, though his skill set matches exactly what New England looks for in their slot men.

And that may be the plan, as Butler's resistance to playing nice with his restricted free agent tender has cast some ambiguity on the depth chart, due to his insistence on getting paid big bucks now instead of waiting until 2018, when he could rake in millions on the open market.

Cyrus Jones started slowly at Alabama and gradually became one of the best shutdown corners in college ball, not to mention it's premier punt returner.  Patriots' fans will all tell you that Jones started very slowly in his professional career as well, particularly as a return man, fumbling away five of his 18 touches in the kicking game and eventually being benched by Belichick.

But if history holds, Jones should begin to display his wares in season two.  Jones' background in football was as a wide receiver, making the transition to cornerback in his sophomore year with the Crimson Tide and contributing in his Junior season after a frightful sophomore campaign, so a blueprint for Jones does exist.

Coleman (5' 11", 185) is slightly under-sized for the slot on the professional level, but gets by on hand fighting underneath and touch tackling in run support, while Jonathan Jones is even smaller but with elite speed that makes him a core-four special teamer.

Neither of those guys are the long-term answer, and if Cyrus Jones doesn't lick it into high gear, he won't be either - but Patriots' fans needn't fret, as Belichick does have a couple of options, the first of which is to retain Butler by either matching any offer sheet that comes his way or to offer his a long-term contract themselves, though Belichick is not the kind of guy to surrender leverage to a player just for the sake of keeping him around...

...nor is he the kind of guy that signs someone in free agency out of desperation, which is what it would appear to be if he did something weird like offer a deal to apparently washed up fly corner Darrelle Revis, as media-generated rumors have been suggesting.

Revis has the size and the length to compete in the slot, and was thought of as a nickel back coming out of college and some even suggested that he would make a better safety due to his innate instinctual ability to visualize a play unfolding in front of him - but Belichick nixed that notion after the 2014 season when he told Revis that his skill set didn't translate to safety in the Patriots scheme.

That doesn't mean that his skill set wouldn't translate to safety elsewhere, just not in New England where the predominant defensive look is in the nickel package, usually with a third safety instead of a third cornerback - a scheme that calls for a box safety to become, essentially, a weakside linebacker, a free safety to become a slot corner and a combination safety to become the football equivalent of a centerfielder.

Of course, Belichick could have just been telling Revis that because he didn't want to re-sign him to a big-money contract just to convert him to safety when his value had always been as a shutdown, fly corner - so Revis went onto his original team in New York, who signed him to a five-year, $70 million contract only to watch his skills diminish to the point that there are now general managers around the league who claim that they wouldn't sign him for free.

The draft offers a few names that may help, such as Michigan's Jourdan Lewis, Florida's Quincey Lewis and Colorado's Chidobe Awusie, though Belichick is far more likely to draft a box safety like Louisville's Josh Harvey-Clemons to compete with the disappointing Jordan Richards or to prepare for the end of the line for long-time starter Patrick Chung.

So what would be the best scenario for the Patriots would be to get restricted free agent Butler to sign his first-round tender that will guarantee him $4 million for this season, then work towards a long-term deal during the season or prepare a rookie to take his place if he hits unrestricted free agency after the season.

Judging from the lack of movement towards a rumored deal with the New Orleans Saints for Butler - due to what can only be described as either a disagreement between the teams for compensation for the corner or a lack of salary cap space in New Orleans, or both - it appears that the Patriots will have the proper leverage to coax another year out of Butler...

...but wouldn't preclude a pre-draft or even a mid-season deal between the teams for Butler's services - but Patriots' fans can rest assured that Belichick won't leave his secondary devoid of a proper slot corner, whatever happens.

Butler, Agent's Impatience Could Mean Patriots' Secondary Looking Much Different

Malcolm Butler was Pro Football Focus's number three-rated coverage cornerback in the entire National Football League last season, and with him in the lineup, the New England Patriots' secondary was rated the third-best in the National Football League.

Coincidence?  Hardly, but one also has to take into account that free safety Devin McCourty earned the title of top coverage safety in the league, while centerfielder Duron Harmon ranks second only to Seattle's Earl Thomas as the best single-high safety in professional football - not to mention that erstwhile slot corner Logan Ryan graded out as a top-ten coverage man at that spot.

But while Ryan has moved on to play with McCourty's twin brother in Tennessee, the remainder of the aforementioned top-three secondary is intact, with former Buffalo Bill Stephon Gilmore adding his press-man ability to that mix, a move that was underwhelming Patriots' fans, given the money he was offered and the potential backlash in the locker room.

That backlash comes in the form of Butler, who has been rumored by one source to be terribly frustrated by the Gilmore contract, and said to be looking forward to working with Gilmore by another.  It all has all the sounds of either a megalo-maniacal agent gone rogue or a collective of mother hen beat writers trying to generate page views - or both.

At the center of all of the madness is Huntsville, Alabama attorney Derek Simpson, who considers being a sports agent a hobby and a part-time job and whose only client is Butler.  The two have formed a fast friendship, which is fortunate for Simpson, because if he didn't have Butler as a client, he would have lost his certification as an agent this coming summer as NFL rules specify that an agent must have at least one client in the NFL for three consecutive years.

Simpson once gave Butler some advice, telling him to take two post-it notes and fix them to his bathroom mirror - one had the number "3" written on it to represent the average length, in years, of an NFL career, and the other had the floating decimal "78.8", which represents the percentage of former NFL players who eventually file for bankruptcy.

Sage advice to be sure, but Butler's path to the big time dictated that he had to start small, as in rookie minimum salary, and work his way into a bigger contract that could be the start of life-long financial security, a start that began with the Patriots placing a first-round tender on the restricted free agent, a marker that was scheduled to pay him just shy of $4 million in 2017.

That may have been enough for Butler had the Patriots not opened the vault for Gilmore, who earned his bones through five years in Buffalo as a first-round draft pick who had to wait for the Bills to pick up his fifth-year option in 2016 before he made any heavy money.

And that's the rub.  Rookie salaries are capped in the NFL, and depending on where a player is drafted, the cap is either higher or lower - and as the tenth overall pick in the 2012 NFL draft, Gilmore was capped at a four-year total of $12 million, fully guaranteed, with most of that ($7.2 million) locked up in a signing bonus which made him an instant millionaire.

Last season on the fifth-year option, which is available only to players who were selected in the first round of the draft, Gilmore made transition tag money, totaling just over $11 million, all the while holding out of OTA's in protest of not being signed to a long-term extension by the Bills.  As it turns out, the Bills offered Gilmore a five-year deal worth $10.5 million per season, but he turned it down, wanting "Josh Norman" money...

...and while he fell short of Josh Norman's contract, what he got from New England was close enough to what the Bills offered him to wonder if Gilmore didn't just want to get out of the losing culture in Bufalo.

Lesson being, although he bitched and railed about money, Gilmore had to wait to get the contract he desired, while Butler and his agent seem to not want to take things as they come - which is unfortunate, as a Butler-Gilmore-Rowe trifecta in the standard nickle package probably would have been the top unit in all of football.

But pending a trade being worked out between the Patriots and Saints, the question looms: what's next for the Patriots' secondary?

Assuming that Butler will be gone and knowing that Ryan already is, the top two corner spots will go to Gilmore and Eric Rowe, twin 6' 1" press-man corners with deep speed - though Rowe, a former college safety,  is equally impressive in zone and is better in run support than Gilmore.  Who plays in the single slot is up in the air, but after a disastrous rookie campaign, Cyrus Jones could be the man.

Jones had his issues with ball security and decision making in the return game, fumbling four times and inexplicably failing to dodge a bouncing punt that hit him in the leg - but early trouble seems to be a staple of Jones' game, as are miraculous recoveries.  He's been a cornerback for just three years - his last two seasons in college after making the transition from wide receiver and his rookie season in Foxborough - and has always embraced adversity...

...and lord knows he had plenty of that last season, so Patriots' fans are about to witness either a complete turnaround as a slot corner or a colossal bust.  Beyond Jones is his college nemesis from Auburn, Jonathan Jones, who has blazing speed (4.33) and specializes in -you guessed it - press-man coverage and does his best work in a phone booth, making him a perfect slot man despite his demure (5' 8") frame.

There's also Justin Coleman who has shown promise in limited action, but if none of these three make the nut, the Patriots could spend mid-round draft capital on a corner in the draft.  Free agency?  Well, three of the top corners remaining have played for the Patriots in the recent past as there's no reason to believe the team is interested in bringing any of them back.

The Patriots spent a second round pick on Darius Butler back in 2009, but was waived tow seasons later and after an initial stop in Carolina eventually found a home in Indianapolis.  Sterling Moore had his 15 minutes of fame as a safety, stripping a potential game-winning touchdown out of Baltimore's Lee Evan's hands, helping to send New England to a Super Bowl...

...and Darrelle Revis won a Super Bowl with the Patriots in 2014 - but while many Patriots' fans are ecstatic about Revis beating the rap and becoming available on the open market, the fact of the matter remains that both Malcolm Butler and Brandon Browner had more success in Matt Patricia's  defense down the stretch than the fading Revis did.

He has since put on about 25 pounds and at age 32 is looking for a switch to safety to try and revive and extend his career, but the price tag is too steep even if he was still the owner of the mythical "Revis Island', and he's made a direct pitch to play for his hometown Steelers, putting the Rooney's on the spot.

In short, there are no decent options on the open market other than Gilmore's battery mate in Buffalo, slot corner Nickell Robey-Coleman, who was recently released by the Bills.  Familiarity between Gilmore and Robey-Coleman wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, and would give the Patriots a young (25), coachable slot corner with four years of experience in a phone booth.

But, of course, this is all dependent on Butler leaving for New Orleans as seems destined to happen - whether it does or not, Patriots' fans should know better than to doubt the team building skills of Belichick.

Reloading The Musket, Part 8 - Cyrus "The Virus" Jones Completes Elite Patriots' Secondary

His nickname might be Clamp Clampington now, but once opposing receivers get a load of rookie cornerback Cyrus Jones, they are going to call him something far more foreboding.

Say hello to Cyrus the Virus.

Far from being the murderous thug portrayed in the cliche'-filled film Con Air, Jones is loved by teammates, loathed by receivers and is the maker of highly circumspect signal callers. Typical of New England Patriots' cornerbacks in that he has less than ideal measurables - giving up several inches to today's taller receivers - Jones makes up for that with excellent technique, ball skills and run support.

All of the Patriots defensive backs are competitive, but none of them except Jones could be considered downright antagonistic. Known for his aggression against receivers on the field and his combative tweets on social media, Jones has actually toned down his reaction to adversity and has been able to mask his on-field emotions to a degree...

...which is fortunate, because growing up even missing a tackle was cause for Jones to become inconsolable. "Some people on the outside couldn't understand. 'Why is he crying? Why does he want the ball all the time?" said his father, Cyrus Sr. "Hopefully now, they can see why."

The coaches at Alabama saw why, as did opposing quarterbacks and receivers and so, apparently, did Patriots' head ball coach and defacto general manager Bill Belichick who used top draft capital on Jones, bringing him in to join the likes of Malcolm Butler, Logan Ryan, Devin McCourty, Pat Chung and Duron Harmon in New England's secondary...

...an already top-ranked secondary according the folks at Pro Football Focus, who slotted them at number three in the entire National Football League, with the caveat that all they were missing was an effective nickle corner, then stating, "They hope to have improved the position with the selection of Cyrus Jones..."

A former wide receiver who transitioned to the cornerback role in college, Jones has exceptional ball skills and impeccable timing, plus has the field vision to become the Patriots' primary punt returner as proven by his four returns for touchdowns for the Crimson Tide last season, his only college season with that responsibility - meaning that his potential is virtually untapped.

The really scary thing for opposing offensive coordinators is that the Patriots have achieved such a lofty status despite having one of the youngest starting secondaries in the NFL at just over 25 years of age on average - the elder statesmen being Chung and McCourty, both at just 28 years old - and with a full stable of young greyhounds learning the ropes behind them, the future is just as bright as the present, if not more so.

The trio of safeties on the back end comprise the best Big Nickle squad in the game.  Harmon patrolling the the deep zone with the range of a speedy centerfielder allows McCourty - a former first round selection as a cornerback - and Chung to reduce down into the five-yard buffer off the line of scrimmage to act as a nickle corner and a weakside linebacker, respectively, McCourty helping out on outside receivers while Chung focuses on the running back.

Combined with the bulk of the front four taking on interior double teams and setting a hard edge on the outside, this alignment allows for the strong side linebacker to mirror the tight end and for the middle linebacker to read and react to the ball - the result of which provided the Patriots with a top ten defense last season - and it's only going to get better.

Because of the success of the alignment, Belichick will likely keep six safeties on the roster for a second consecutive season, limiting the roster spots for the true cornerbacks.

McCourty, Chung and Harmon are givens, as is second-year strong safety Jordan Richards, who is an insurance policy against any free agency defections next offseason, but the depth behind these four is a matter of some conjecture, as the last two slots traditionally go to special teams' mavens.

Last season, those went to Olympic Rugby player Nate Ebner and former Auburn "star" linebacker Brandon King, both of whom more than made a case for continuation in those roles in 2016, which is bad news for the fringe players vying for a spot on the 53 - the one exception could be rookie Kamu Grugier-Hill, who played weakside linebacker in college, but has the speed and athleticism to make the team as a Chung-like Big Nickle...

...though he could likely count against the linebacker depth chart.  Regardless, the limitations on the roster spots could again leave the team with just four corners - and with Butler, Ryan and Jones locks to make the roster, that leaves just one spot open amid a glut of potential candidates.

The smart money would be on either Justin Coleman or Darryl Roberts, both second year players with off-the-charts intangibles.

Roberts broke a bone in his wrist and landed on the Patriots' IR last preseason which, in retrospect, allowed the team to keep him around rather than expose him to waivers at the end of camp - a sure cut who needed a year of technique work and refinement, not to mention getting his skinny butt into the weight room, and the team took advantage of all of that once his injury healed.

The Marshall product has elite speed (4.38), loose hips to charge direction on a dime and rocket launchers in his legs to get to high balls, but he also had bad habits that needed to be corrected, such as mugging receivers well into their pattern, drawing laundry from the referees.

As a result of injuries to Roberts and others, the rookie Coleman got plenty of opportunity to display his wares as a nickle corner, logging five passes defended and 21 tackles in his ten games with New England in 2015 - this despite less-than-prototypical speed.  What set the Tennessee product apart from his contemporaries was his quickness underneath, something he displayed in abundance at the scouting combine...

...notching top grades in the twenty and sixty yard shuttles as well as the three cone drill.  Coleman bounced around early in the season between Minnesota, Seattle and Foxborough, but eventually settled in with the Patriots and held up well.

In many ways, Jones is a compendium of those two second year players: He doesn't carry Roberts' fast wheels, but does display a penchant for punking receivers, and he didn't blow up the pre-draft process like Coleman did, instead displaying incredibly normal athleticism - but when he punks the receiver, he does so within the five-yard mugging zone that corners are allowed to have contact with them.

This is his main attribute.  His ability to fight in the legal zone and intimidate pass catchers with his aggressive posture, excellent play strength and nasty attitude are key, but the fact that he transitioned from wide receiver at Alabama to the other side of the ball in his sophomore season gives him a unique insight into the head of a pass catcher, making it easy for him to get under their skin.

His game is intimidation, and once he gets under a receiver's skin there is no cure for him - there is no antibiotic to inject them with, no salve to calm their savage rash, not even a magical elixer to treat the symptoms.  Receivers are just going to have to let Cyrus the Virus run his course and just hope that the next time they meet, they can wash their hands of him.