Kam Curl outstanding in multiple roles for Commanders against Cardinals
Breaking down a fantastic performance in a variety of ways from Kam Curl
The Washington Commanders defense had a strong opening game of the season against the Arizona Cardinals, who admittedly were poor. A number of Washington players stood out. The defensive line dominated with Jonathan Allen and Daron Payne constantly winning blocks inside while Montez Sweat created some big plays in crucial moments off the edge.
In the secondary, the Commanders had some other stand out performers. Second year safety Percy Butler had a strong performance, as did cornerback Kendall Fuller. Benjamin St-Juste showed some versatility lining up both outside and in the slot. But for me, there was one player that stood out above everyone on defense and that was Kam Curl.
Curl is an underrated component of this defense because he doesn’t have many turnovers, which is what too many people base safety play off of. But when you watch him throughout the course of the game, you see how many different roles he plays from down to down and how he plays them all to a high level.
Curl’s first big play of the game came in the red zone while playing safety. The Commanders show a two deep safety coverage with Curl and Darrick Forrest aligned at about 10 yards off the line of scrimmage. The Cardinals have tight end Zach Ertz isolated to the right of the formation and seemingly matched up on rookie cornerback Emmanuel Forbes. Off the snap, Ertz works up the field and angles his route slightly wider to force Forbes wider and open up space for him to break inside.
However, as he looks to break inside, Kam Curl is there ready to break on the route. The quarterback looks to hit Ertz as he breaks inside, but Curl drives down on the route and beats Ertz to the spot. The quarterback throws low to try and give Ertz a chance to shield the ball from Curl, but because Curl beats Ertz to the spot, Ertz is forced to go on the defensive and sticks an arm into the catch point to prevent Curl from intercepting the pass.
The role of the strong safety can change pretty quickly in this defense. One moment Curl could be play deep as part of a two deep coverage like we just saw, the next he could be working to the flat.
Here we see Curl start from about 10 yards off the line of scrimmage again, showing another two deep look before the snap. However, at the snap of the ball, Curl steps up towards the line of scrimmage and focuses his attention on the tight end. The tight end starts to break to the flat and Curl mirrors him. Curl stepping up at the snap was smart because he managed to avoid traffic from Forbes following the outside receiver as he broke inside, meaning Curl likely had an indication what was coming from studying film during the week.
Curl breaks to the flat quickly and is there with a strong tackle on the hip of the tight end immediately after the ball arrives. He doesn’t prevent the catch, but he does keep the gain to a minimum as he shows off his tackling ability in space.
That tackling ability in space shouldn’t be underestimated either. We’ve seen plenty of defensive backs miss those types of tackles over the last few years, but Curl is strong in that area, which enables him to restrict yards after the catch and keep gains to a minimum. He made another similar play later on in the game.
Like before, Curl starts off about 10 yards off the line of scrimmage as part of the two deep safety look the Commanders like to show pre-snap. This time though, Curl’s eyes go to the opposite side of the field, ready to match any route that breaks from the three receiver side across the middle to his side of the field. That route never comes, so Curl gets his eyes in the backfield, where he spots the quarterback trying to spin out of the pocket and the running back leaking out to the flat after having stayed in to help protect.
Curl doesn’t hesitate for even a moment. As soon as he spots the running back, he drives down from deep, knowing that the quarterback has no other option but to try and check it down to the back while under pressure. Thanks to that decisiveness, Curl closes so quickly that he’s able to land a strong hit on the running back as he’s securing the pass. Curl got there so quickly, in fact, that he made the tackle behind the line of scrimmage, meaning the Cardinals actually lost yardage on the play.
So far we’ve only seen plays from Curl at safety, but I mentioned that Curl performs so many roles on this defense. Let’s now move onto how Curl played when he shifted down to the dime linebacker role.
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