How Marshon Lattimore fared in his Commanders debut

Breaking down the performance of CB Marshon Lattimore in his first game with the Commanders

After weeks of waiting, we finally got to see Marshon Lattimore’s debut with the Washington Commanders. The star cornerback missed multiple games with a hamstring injury that the Commanders were sure to be cautious with, but after a bye week Lattimore was ready to go and made his debut against his former team. His debut was largely uneventful as he didn’t register a single stat, but for a cornerback that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The Saints didn’t even consider throwing his way for the entire game, which is exactly what you want from your top cornerback.

Before I get into how Lattimore played, I thought I’d first discuss how the scheme has adjusted with him in the line up. There was lots of speculation when the trade was announced of who he would replace. Would he play outside with Benjamin St-Juste and allow Mike Sainristil to shift back inside to the slot or would he essentially replace St-Juste on the outside alongside Sainristil and leave Noah Igbinoghene in the slot. The answer was the latter, but the Commanders made a slight tweak to their system too.

When the Commanders moved Sainristil outside and settled on a trio of St-Juste, Sainristil and Igbinoghene in the slot, they opted to play with boundary and field corners. What this means is that the outside cornerbacks wouldn’t stick to the same side of the field or follow a specific match up. Instead, Sainristil would line up on the field side while St-Juste would line up on the boundary. For those that don’t know, NFL teams like to split the field based on the alignment of the ball. When the ball is placed on a hashmark, it’s closer to one sideline than the other. The side of the field it’s closer to is called the boundary because it’s closer to the boundary, while the other side of the field is called the field because there is more space. So throughout games, you’d see Sainristil and St-Juste swap sides quite often, but they always stuck to their respective roles. Here’s what that looked like.

In this picture, you can see how the Titans have the ball on the right hashmark, making the boundary their right side of the field and the field the left. Sainristil is the field corner, so he lines up to the offensive left here as that’s the field side, while St-Juste is the boundary corner, so he lines up to the offensive right. But the ball doesn’t always stay on the same hashmark.

This time you can see the ball is on the left hashmark, making the left side of the field for the offense the boundary and the right side the field. So St-Juste and Sainristil swap sides here, but maintain their respective roles.

You typically see this more in college than the NFL because the hashmarks are further apart in the college game so it makes more of a difference. There are a few theories as to why Washington went with this plan. The first is that St-Juste has struggled in coverage this year, so by making him the boundary corner, he’s always closer to the sideline and has less space to cover. Another theory is that while there is less space, teams will often isolate their top receiver to the boundary with three receivers on the field side so they can use more space. With that theory, the Commanders could say they kept St-Juste as the boundary corner to have him mostly matchup against the opposing top receivers and prevent a rookie in Sainristil from being overly exposed.

Whatever their reasoning, that strategy appears to be gone now that Lattimore is here. Lattimore replaced St-Juste on the field, but the roles have now seemingly switched from boundary and field corners, to simply right and left corners.

This was one of the Saints first passing plays of the game. The ball is on the left hashmark for the offense, making that side of the field the boundary. Lattimore lines up on that side so initially it appeared as though Lattimore was replacing St-Juste both on the field and in the same role. However, later in the game, the Saints had the ball on the right hashmark and Lattimore stayed on the same side of the field.

Here you can see the ball is on the right hashmark for the offense, but Lattimore remains to the offensive left. This was consistent throughout the game, with Lattimore lining up to the left side of the offense all game. The left side of the offense is the right side of the defense, so it’s clear that the Commanders decided that Lattimore is their right cornerback and Sainristil is their left cornerback.

So with that schematic tweak out of the way, how did Lattimore actually play? Well, as I mentioned, the Saints didn’t even try to target him in this game so he didn’t have much to do. He wasn’t exactly spectacular as a result. However, he did have some nice reps in situations that other Washington cornerbacks have struggled with this season.

On this play, the Saints attempted a double move at Lattimore. The receiver outside to the left runs a stutter-go, getting to about eight yards and stuttering to fake a break inside before taking off down the sideline. We’ve seen St-Juste beaten on double moves all season, but Sainristil has been guilty of losing them too. Before he was cut, Emmanuel Forbes was benched because he struggled so much with them. But Lattimore shows how to play it perfectly here. He plays off the line of scrimmage and takes inside leverage, knowing he has the sideline to help him if the receiver breaks outside. He sits on the route initially, not gaining depth as he reads the receiver. The receiver gets close to him and begins to stutter, but Lattimore doesn’t bite.

Instead of biting on the fake, Lattimore closes the gap between himself and the receiver while staying on top of the route. He gets his hand on the receiver to make his presence known while being able to keep control of the route. This enables Lattimore to look back for the ball while he guides the receiver towards the sideline, but of course the ball never comes because the Saints didn’t want to test their former star cornerback.

Another thing the Commanders have struggled with this season is giving up curls and comebacks. St-Juste in particular had a lot of issues covering those types of routes and consistently took extra steps at the top of the route to try and slow his momentum down and break on the receiver. Those extra steps gave the receiver lots of separation and ultimately gave up a lot of catches. Lattimore, though, showed in this game he can stick much tighter on those types of routes.