Just a Nickel Defense

[Joe MorrisonLives]

The 4-2-5 is called that for a reason. It means 4-DL; 2-Lbs; and 5-DBs. What personnel and how you attack out of that alignment is a different matter. You can add a 3rd CB or you can add a 3rd safety. As a previous poster mentioned you can even add a LB type player in at a saftety position. Either way it's still a 4-2-5 alignment. Each team's personnel situation along with the game situation will determine the personnel grouping and how the team will attack out of that formation.

And I may be mixing you up with someone else but on one of the threads we argued on, someone said "it's just a Nickel defense, we ran one last year." And that's what this whole thread was started to push back against, the implication that we're not doing anything different than what's already been done. If I wrongly attributed that to you, I'll own it. But I've been paying attention to what works against the RPO and this was the sort of scheme I wanted before we made any kind of hire.

 

[Joe MorrisonLives]

To be fair, I don't think BOOM! ever recruited the right guy to be the hybrid LB-safety. When Skai was gone, that was over.

The only lb/safety hybrid in Booms scene is the dime linebacker because he wanted to keep six in the box against 4 wide sets in case the offense ran it, one more example of Boom having an outdated approach because he wanted to trade a natural pass coverage advantage for a run stuffing one, we rarely used it and he thought it was our best defense going into last season. Our nickel was a true nickel lining up out of the box and usually taking the slot receiver in man coverage. 2019 Jammie Robinson had the best PFF grade in our secondary taking most of his snaps at nickel.