Evaluating Percy Butler's development at safety
Looking forward to the future by evaluating the development of safety Percy Butler
Washington Commanders safety Percy Butler has had quite an interesting second year in the NFL. The 2022 fourth-round pick hardly played in his rookie year, finding himself stuck behind Darrick Forrest, Kam Curl, Bobby McCain and Jeremy Reaves. However, after a promising offseason and training camp, Butler earned more snaps as the third safety at the start of the season. The Commanders frequently used a three safety package with Kam Curl being so versatile and being able to shift from strong safety to big nickel or even dime linebacker. When Kurl was playing those other roles, Butler replaced him at strong safety while Forrest remained at free safety.
In that third safety role, Butler put in some promising performances that suggested he perhaps deserved some more playing time. But then Forrest and Reaves both got injured and Butler was next in line to start at free safety. This is when we started to see some common issues arise. The first and most obvious was open field tackling. As the free safety, Butler was often left deep as the last line of defense, so when a runner or receiver broke free of the initial defenders, Butler needed to be the one to make the stop and prevent a bad play from turning into a terrible one. Unfortunately, he failed to do so on too many occasions.
Here are the two worst examples. The first play of this clip comes against the Patriots. They hand the ball off on a simple inside run between the tackles from well inside their own half. The Commanders have a few issues up front. First, Jonathan Allen gets in the wrong gap, allowing the left guard to climb freely without having to help the left tackle secure the block. That allows the guard to get up to the second level in a hurry. That leads into the second main problem with this play, the stunt from Jamin Davis and David Mayo. The pair are tasked with running a cross dog stunt where Mayo rushes up and attacks the A gap on Davis’ side while Davis loops around him and fills the A gap on Mayo’s side of the field.
Mayo hits his gap but Davis is a tick slow to react to the snap. That delay plus Allen allowing the guard to climb instantly means Davis gets caught on a block effectively in the same gap as Mayo, leaving a huge lane for the running back. This is all important context because it shows that Butler isn’t the only defender at fault on this play. However, as the free safety, his job is to clean up when others make a mess. Butler comes charging down from deep but the back bounces his run outside. Butler fails to anticipate and adjust to that bounce and ends up diving at his feet, unable to make the tackle. It’s a tough spot for Butler to be in with so much open field and again, he’s not the only player at fault here, but he failed to make the tackle and the result of that is the running back taking it all the way to the end zone for a 64-yard touchdown.
The second play of the clip happens to be another 64-yard touchdown from the very next game. This time, the Seahawks drop back to pass and the Commanders drop into a basic Cover-2 look. Butler is one of the deep safeties responsible for a deep half of the field. The initial part of the play goes well across the board, with the safeties getting to the correct landmarks, the underneath defenders playing their zones well and the Seahawks have nobody open. The pass rush then arrives and quarterback Geno Smith is forced out of the pocket and quickly checks it down to the running back underneath.
Cornerback Danny Johnson should be the first defender there and really should be the one making this play and keeping the gain to a minimum. Unfortunately, Johnson slips as he transitions into trying to drive down underneath. This gives the running back a small advantage and he made the most of it. He bursts past Johnson, who can’t recover from the slip to make the play, and then turns up the sideline. Butler then comes down from deep and again, his job is to make the tackle and stop a bad play turning into a terrible one. But as Butler gets close to the running back, he stops his feet, which allows the back to put a little move on him and skip by him. Butler attempts a diving tackle at the back’s legs, but the back breaks through it easily and bursts down the sideline for the touchdown.
Put simply, these are plays Butler has to make as the last line of defense. As I showed, there were other players at fault too and in an ideal world, those plays never get to Butler in the first place. But the reality of the NFL is mistakes will happen and the deep safety has to be the man that limits the damage caused by those mistakes. He had the opportunity to stop both of these plays at about midfield and because he wasn’t able to make either tackle, the team surrendered touchdowns.
Butler has also had some mistakes in coverage, which just like with the missed tackles, if a safety is having issues in coverage then the results typically end up as touchdowns given up.
The first play of this clip comes back from week five against the Bears. The Commanders play Tampa-2 in the red zone with Butler responsible for a deep half on his side of the field. The Beats have three receivers aligned on his side of the field with a tight end running up the seam and a slot fade combination on the outside. Butler makes a big mistake here. As a Tampa-2 safety, he should be looking to get depth and width, getting all the way out to the numbers in order to give him the ability to stay on top of things both outside and inside.
Instead, Butler locks in on the tight end running up the seam. This causes him to close his hips inside and maintain a position between the hashmarks and the numbers. This is nowhere near enough width for this coverage and he’s focusing entirely on the wrong assignment. The tight end in the seam is the Mike linebacker’s responsibility, Cody Barton is the hole player and the whole point of having him play deeper than the rest of the underneath coverage is that he can protect the middle of the field and let the safeties get wider. Barton has the route covered and Butler notices far too late that he’s made a big mistake. By the time he realizes, the ball is already in the air and he can’t make up ground in time to prevent D.J. Moore from catching the touchdown.
On the second play of the clip, Butler is playing as the single deep safety. This time, instead of getting width, Butler should be looking to stay in the middle of the field and gain depth to stay on top of everything. The Cowboys align receiver Brandin Cooks in the slot to the right and he runs a nice double move, releasing inside and faking a corner route before breaking back inside to the post. Butler loses his positioning again here. He should be looking to stay in the middle of the field and play the route inside out, but instead he overreacts to Cooks breaking outside. That reaction takes Butler out of the middle of the field, which then enables Cooks to cut across his face back inside. The quarterback spots Cooks running open and throws a nice pass to lead Cooks away from Butler, who is unable to recover and surrenders another touchdown.
Clearly then, things for Butler as a deep safety haven’t been going well this season. He’s surrendered a number of big explosive plays from poor positioning in coverage and poor tackling in the open field once the ball is thrown. It would be easy then to say when looking to the future, Butler is probably not a building block for this franchise going forward. However, Butler has still had some very promising plays this season that show when used correctly, he can have a positive impact.
In recent weeks, the Commanders have swapped Butler and Curl’s roles around slightly. Because Curl is so versatile and able to do so many things to a high level, they’ve used his experience and reliability to take some pressure off Butler. Curl has been the guy that has played more of the free safety role as the deepest defender while Butler has played more of a strong safety role, shifting down towards the box. Long term, this wouldn’t suit Kam Curl who is excellent closer to the line of scrimmage, but in the short term it’s benefitting Butler. In this strong safety role, which is similar to the role he played at the start of the season in the three safety package, he’s looked far more comfortable playing closer to the line of scrimmage.
We’re going all the way back to the opening game of the season for this clip. Butler is down closer to the box as the strong safety while Forrest plays deeper as the free safety. That means Butler can focus on attacking things underneath instead of worrying about playing deep. The Cardinals hand the ball off on a run inside, but Cody Barton does a nice job filling the lane quickly and forcing the back to bounce his run to the edge. Unfortunately, James Smith-Williams loses contain on the edge and the back is able to turn the corner. However, Butler comes charging down from his strong safety spot and shows off the athletic prowess that led to him being drafted. He covers a lot of ground in a short time and uses his momentum to make a strong tackle to keep the gain to a minimum.
This type of play has continued whenever Butler has been allowed to play a bit closer to the line of scrimmage.
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