Rookie Report: How Jamin Davis and Benjamin St-Juste played against the Patriots

Taking a closer look at how Washington’s top two defensive rookies played in the preseason opener.

After watching back the first half of Washington’s preseason opener against the Patriots, I thought I’d give some notes on how some of Washington’s rookies looked in their debuts. In this post, I’ll take a look at first-round linebacker Jamin Davis and third-round cornerback Benjamin St-Juste.

Jamin Davis

As I mentioned in my postgame notes piece, Davis didn’t have a particularly stand out performance. If anything, he looked like a rookie that was thinking instead of just playing. A good chunk of that is likely down to the amount that the coaching staff has put on his plate. It would have been easy to put Davis at the Will, or weak side, linebacker spot from day one and have him just learn one role within the defense. That would have likely led to a smaller learning curve and Davis playing faster and more freely in his debut.

However, Washington’s coaching staff challenged Davis to learn the Mike, or middle, linebacker role, which is effectively the quarterback of the defense. The Mike linebacker is the one who receives the call from the coaching staff on each play and communicates it to the rest of the defense before each snap. But on top of that, the Mike is the one responsible for making adjustments at the line of scrimmage. If the offense motions from a two by two formation into a three by one, the coverage or defensive formation called might not fit, so the Mike is the one that has to read that adjustment and make his own call to get the defense into the right call.

That’s a lot to put on any rookies shoulders, and I still think it will ultimately lead to Jon Bostic taking over at the Mike spot with Davis shifting to the Will once the regular season begins. But for now, it’s a good challenge for Davis that forces him to learn the defense as a whole, rather than just one role within it. The downside of that though, is the struggles we saw from Davis on Thursday night. He was slow to read, process and react on certain plays, causing him to get reached in the run game.

Here, the Patriots run a pin-pull scheme to their right. The wide receiver aligns tight to the formation and crack blocks defensive end William Bradley-King. That allows the right tackle to pull around to the edge, followed by the fullback and the running back. On this type of play, the Mike has to identify the crack block key and quickly get outside to fill his gap. However, Davis is just a tick slow, which is all right guard Shaq Mason needs to climb up to the second level and cut him off. Davis gets reached and taken for a ride by Mason as the back picks up nine yards.

The Patriots came back with the same play in the second quarter.

This is the same play, but flipped in the opposite direction. So this time, the receiver on the left side of the line cracks down on the defensive end, allowing the left tackle to pull around to the edge. It’s the left guard rather than the right guard that works up to try and block Davis. An experienced linebacker might have noticed this look from earlier and from film study (and to be fair to Davis, teams don’t really study opponents' film too thoroughly in the preseason) and made an adjustment before the snap. But Davis is aligned slightly more to the right side of the offense, making him even easier to reach and seal off. The left guard works up to Davis and attempts to seal him off. To Davis’ credit, he does end up getting underneath the block, but not before the back has already picked up a solid gain.

Davis was also slow at times to react to play-action fakes, particularly early on in the game.

On this play, the Patriots run a play-action bootleg to their right, with a tight end crossing the field from the left side of the offensive line. Davis steps up to try and fit his gap on the run fake, but fails to notice clues like the tight end releasing into a route and the other tight end sifting back across the line into the flat. That leaves him late to read pass and makes him out of position for his coverage responsibility. He attempts to get back underneath the tight end, but fortunately the rest of the defense does a solid job pressuring the quarterback and forcing a hurried throw to the flat.

It wasn’t the best start for a first-round pick, certainly, but it is worth remembering that Washington’s coaching staff are challenging Davis right now. They could have made it easier for him by having him play the Will all offseason, but in the long term being able to play the Mike and know the entire defense rather than just one role will be hugely beneficial, especially for a linebacker that was drafted to be a leader on this defense for years to come. That means patience will be required with Davis as he develops in preseason and into the regular season. 

As I’ve said numerous times, I still think come the start of the regular season, he and Bostic will flip spots and we could see him settle in and start to play faster. But until then, Washington’s coaches are clearly trying to challenge Davis to see just how much he can handle and how good he could be in the long run.

Benjamin St-Juste

I’ve pondered all offseason if third-round corner Benjamin St-Juste would be ready to contribute this season. Washington has two established cornerbacks in Kendall Fuller and Williams Jackson to play outside, while Jimmy Moreland is capable of handling the slot. But if St-Juste is ready to contribute, with his size and length on the outside, he could change how this defense plays pretty drastically. 

What we saw from the first preseason game was that the team feels St-Juste is ready to contribute as the third cornerback. Fuller and Jackson will still play outside in base sets, but in nickel, Fuller’s history as a slot corner means he can kick inside and allow St-Juste to play outside. When he plays outside, he can use his length to press and jam receivers at the line.

Here, St-Juste works with Washingtons’ second team defense against the Patriots’ second team offense. The Patriots look to hit a slant against St-Juste. The receiver initially works outside to force St-Juste to open his hips to the sideline before attempting to break back inside on the slant. However, St-Juste is able to jam him with his inside arm and knock him off his path slightly. The receiver still manages to get inside, but has to take a much sharper angle to the ball. St-Juste sticks with the receiver and uses his length to reach in at the catch point and ensure the receiver can’t pull in the catch.

That’s exactly the type of play Washington would hope to see from St-Juste. However, it wasn’t all clean sailing for him. There were times when St-Juste had a few issues too.

On this play, St-Juste again aligns on the line of scrimmage in press coverage on the outside. He plays with inside leverage to try and force an outside release. The receiver attempts to work inside and St-Juste responds by trying to jam him with his inside hand again. However, St-Juste strikes the outside shoulder of the receiver with tha inside hand, which is ineffective and not only allows the receiver to get inside of him, but causes St-Juste to lose balance and nearly fall over. The receiver runs away from him up the seam, but fortunately for St-Juste the ball is thrown elsewhere.

Defenders will get beat from time to time playing press coverage, it just comes with the job. But how often they get beat is important. Consistency is the key for St-Juste being able to contribute in his rookie year. If Washington can trust him to hold up in press coverage on the outside, then it opens up a whole lot for this defense. 

This was the opening third down of the game for the Patriots’ offense. Washington shows two deep safeties pre-snap, with both Landon Collins and Kam Curl back deep. However, Jackson, Fuller and St-Juste all align in press coverage, as does linebacker Cole Holcomb over the tight end. Just before the ball is snapped, Collins charges down into the box, showing a potential safety blitz. Curl rotates back into the deep middle as a countermeasure. What this means is Washington plays pure man coverage. St-Juste and Jackson take the outside receivers, Fuller covers the slot and Holcomb sticks to the tight end while Curl is the only protection deep. 

That frees up Collins and Bostic to rush and force the running back to not only stay in to protect, but to work to their side of the line. Both Collins and Bostic appear to check the back to make sure he doesn’t release into a route before rushing, suggesting one or both have a coverage responsibility if the back doesn’t protect, but the threat of both of them creates an overload to that side of the line. In the regular season, I’m sure Defensive Coordinator Jack Del Rio would like to see both Bostic and Collins show more urgency in rushing and overload that side of the line, because the Patriots actually had a protection slide going the other way.

But the other part of this play is the game played by Jonathan Allen and Daron Payne. The pair run a stunt inside that forces the line slide from the Patriots to focus on those two. With both guards and the center occupied by Allen and Payne, not only are the Patriots overloaded by Collins and Bostic on their right side, but Chase Young is left with a one-on-one matchup against the left tackle. 

That is the key look Washington is trying to get here. Young uses a beautiful hand combination of a long-arm stab with his inside hand along with a swipe with his outside hand to get to the edge and turn the corner incredibly quickly on his way to the quarterback. Young’s hands weren’t as effective as that last season and if they can be as consistently effective as that, then he will be a MAJOR problem for offensive tackles around the league.

The bigger picture here though, is how the defense can benefit as a whole from St-Juste being ready to contribute early on. Because Washington trusted him to hold up outside, the team was able to play man coverage, freeing up Collins and Bostic to rush and occupy the back. It meant that not only did Washington have an overload to that side, most importantly it meant that Chase Young was able to get a pure one-on-one with the left tackle despite the offensive line sliding his way. That is a huge win schematically for Washington, especially if Young takes the next step this season.