The Arizona Cardinals made Clemson Tiger star Isaiah Simmons the eighth overall pick of the 2020 NFL Draft. Simmons was described as a “positionless” player in the pre-draft process. Pro Football Focus recorded no majority position in his pre-snap alignments in his final year at Clemson.
The Cardinals planned for Simmons to be a tight-end “eraser.” Defensive coordinator Vance Joseph’s scheme has for years struggled to contain opposing tight ends. Simmons, the team projected, would play on the second level of the defense across from the tight end, his primary coverage assignment.
Unlike most top-ten picks, Simmons struggled to see the field as a rookie. His execution as a linebacker left much to be desired by his coaches.
...and knifes through here but comes up empty.
— Football Guy TRIdP (@DynastyTripp) August 15, 2021
And that's ok, right? Because the second LB comes from the back side to clean it -- errr -- nope.
WOOF, Isaiah Simmons. pic.twitter.com/5j4K9CynXl
He overcame this preseason performance to start and play full-time alongside middle linebacker Jordan Hicks throughout 2021, his second pro season. After a decent start to the season, the Cardinals’ defensive performance flagged badly down the stretch. They were easily eliminated by NFC West rival L.A. in the playoffs. Simmons’s pass coverage suffered with that of the team’s, and he generated little pressure in his opportunities as an edge rusher.
This summer, Vance Joseph and the Cardinals redefined Simmons’s position as “starbacker.” The role isn’t radically different in 2022 than in 2021; however, two key differences exist. First, he’s less likely to play on the edge, and second, he’s no longer playing full time. He is frequently the nickel defender in a defensive backfield that stars Budda Baker and Jalen Thompson at safety.
The Cardinals are following the league-wide trend in 2022 by relying more frequently on two high safeties versus last year when they predominantly alternated Baker and Thompson in deep centerfield. With two safeties deep, the defense needs more in run support from the nickel. At 6-foot-4 and 238 pounds with 4.39 speed, Simmons certainly looks the part of a formidable run defender in space.
No Slot Cornerback
Alas, Isaiah Simmons has not thrived in the Starbacker role either. Importantly, the Cardinals are not the only team redefining a role errantly known as “slot cornerback” in many forums.
The Buccaneers have moved star safety Antoine Winfield into the slot. He has already exceeded his career high in tackles for loss with five, matched his career high in sacks (3.0), and is on pace to match his career-high tackles total.
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Few would conflate Winfield with their preconceived notion of a slot cornerback. 49ers defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans offered in a preseason interview that a nickel is “really a linebacker.”
Ryans expounded, “You’ve got to be able to get in there to handle the run but also be quick enough to match guys in the passing game.” This is increasingly true in defenses that lean toward zone defenses and two, rather than one, high safeties.
The nickel position might be poorly understood because it has no famous examples. Perhaps the best-known is a player whose name is, in fact, “Nikell.” Nikell Robey-Coleman (pronounced ni-KELL) is the prototypical slot cornerback who, at 5-foot-8 and 180 pounds, lined up over small, shifty slot receivers like Wes Welker and Hunter Renfrow.
CB Cheat Code
Due in no small part to prototypes like Robey-Coleman, conventional wisdom in IDP fantasy football remains that any safety should be rostered and started over any player designated “cornerback.” Meanwhile, Chiefs’ nickel LJarius Sneed is the number-one overall defensive back in fantasy points at Footballguys.com. Former IDP darling Jessie Bates, the Bengals' free safety, ranks 106th with fewer than half of Sneed’s fantasy points through seven weeks of 2022.
Sneed is fueling his fantasy value with tackles and sacks. He has the third most tackles among all defensive backs (53) and leads them in sacks (3.5). Sneed has the second-most blitz attempts among his peers and has enjoyed remarkable pass-rush success that will be difficult but not impossible to sustain. Sneed is only nominally a cornerback on the Chiefs’ depth chart; he’s played fewer snaps on the boundary than he has among the Chiefs’ front seven per Pro Football Focus alignment tracking.
Target the STAR
It's no coincidence that Sneed’s numbers resemble those of a strong-side linebacker from a bygone era. Like Ryans, Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells equates the modern nickel with a linebacker. Not only is Sneed an integral part of the Chiefs’ pass-rush and run defense, but also, he’s responsible for move tight ends in the slot.
Strong-side linebackers are often nicknamed SAM in defensive playbooks. Some of these playbooks identify their nickel as the STAR, where the ‘S’ in both nicknames stands for “strong side.” The team perhaps best known for a STAR in their formation is Los Angeles. The Rams rotate Jalen Ramsey through the alignment, helping him to 31st in fantasy points per game.
Nickel defenders enjoy higher tackle rates than typical cornerbacks for two reasons. In addition to their responsibilities in run defense, they see shallower, more frequent targets in pass defense. In short, they have more value than boundary cornerbacks because they line up closer to the football at the snap.
Several teams move a cornerback who plays on the boundary in base defense to the slot in nickel. Indianapolis’s Kenny Moore, Chicago’s Kyler Gordon, Las Vegas’s Nate Hobbs, Arizona’s Byron Murphy, Cleveland’s Greg Newsome, and Tennessee’s Roger McCreary are all rotating through the slot. All but Moore and Newsome rank among the top 24 scorers among fantasy cornerbacks. Kenny Moore led all defensive backs in fantasy points in 2021 as the Colts’ regular nickel.
A riser at the position is Seahawks rookie nickel, Coby Bryant. His workload has increased each week to a 96% snap share in Week 7 versus the Chargers. He collected the first quarterback sack of his career in Week 3, one of his seven blitzes, and has achieved a healthy rate of tackles per snap at 9%. The Seahawks defense is becoming more aggressive as its personnel settles into the scheme revisions installed for 2022, and Bryant has been a contributing piece. He’s worth adding in cornerback-required leagues and watching elsewhere, given how productive Seattle’s defensive backs have been for fantasy football so far in 2022.
Coby Bryant... outside linebacker? Haha pic.twitter.com/ubEMTAU2ur
— Corbin K. Smith (@CorbinSmithNFL) October 25, 2022
IDP Fantasy Reclamation Project?
Isaiah Simmons is useless to IDP gamers as a linebacker playing part-time but could eventually be useful with a ‘DB’ designation if he can carve out a larger role as a nickel defender. Another 2022 fantasy draft pick bust could find a similar path to relevancy.
Kyle Hamilton’s inability to see the field after Baltimore made him the 14th-overall pick of the 2022 NFL Draft has been one of IDP’s bigger disappointments. The prevailing preseason narrative surrounding the Ravens’ defense was that Hamilton would push incumbent play-caller Chuck Clark off the field and perhaps even out of Baltimore. This narrative failed to account for the nickel role in new coordinator Mike McDonald’s defense.
Through seven weeks, no Raven has taken hold of the role. Meanwhile, Geno Stone has stepped into the free-safety role vacated by the injured Marcus Williams, suggesting that centerfield is not where McDonald sees the 6'foot'4 and 219-pound rookie fitting best.
The Ravens faced the Buccaneers in Week 8’s Thursday night game. Unfortunately, Hamilton twisted an ankle; nevertheless, he was on pace for a season-high snap count. He collected three tackles and broke up a pass in 36 snaps. More importantly, he rushed the passer four times (per Pro Football Focus) and hit Tom Brady once.
If his injury is minor, Hamilton is finally emerging as a fantasy asset. He should be held or picked up in all but shallow seasonal leagues. He could fill the void left by Brandon Jones for fantasy gamers who chase scoring from big plays. Hamilton may yet be on a path to becoming, in the words of Bill Parcells, the most important player on the Ravens' defense.
Kyle Hamilton’s athleticism and physicality are starting to shine.
— Spencer N. Schultz (@ravens4dummies) October 19, 2022
Still some work to do mentally, but can be a big slot eraser (was in this game) and starting to HIT. pic.twitter.com/nWNlZbvxzh
Analysis in Reading the Defense will equip fantasy gamers with the confidence to acquire players for their rosters and deploy them on Sundays. Readers are welcome to contact and follow this writer @DynastyTripp on Twitter.