What role Jartavius Martin could play in the Commanders' defense
Breaking down what role in Washington's defense might best suit Martin's skillset.
When the Washington Commanders announced their decision to cut veteran defensive back Bobby McCain, I was quite surprised. While fans never fully took to McCain, he became a key piece in Washington’s secondary due to his versatility to play both the slot and as a deep free safety. He allowed them to stay in their favored “Buffalo nickel” package, which is essentially just a normal nickel package but with a third safety playing the slot instead of a typical slot corner.
With McCain gone, I figured the Commanders would need to find someone else to fill that role or go in a different direction with a more conventional slot cornerback. They didn’t address the need in free agency and when the team drafted Emmanuel Forbes in the first round I thought it was unlikely to grab another defensive back early. However, Jartavius “Quan” Martin was then drafted in the second round and it all made sense. Martin has a similar skillset to McCain in that he can play both over the slot and as a deep safety. Having watched a number of Martin’s games now, I believe he will be the player to replace McCain’s role within the Commanders defense and perhaps even be an upgrade if he can handle the workload.
So what exactly was the role that McCain played? Well, the Commanders played around with lots of different looks, coverages and roles to try and find their best combinations. What they eventually landed on was using Darrick Forrest as the free safety, Kam Curl as the strong safety and Bobby McCain as the nickel/buffalo nickel. In its most basic form, that looked something like this:
On this play against the Eagles, we can see the different roles of each player pretty clearly defined. Forrest starts as the deepest defender and he is the single deep safety on this play, responsible for the deep middle of the field. Curl is also fairly deep before the snap, trying to fake a two-deep look with Forrest but he’s actually responsible for matching up to the tight end that releases to the flat. McCain initially aligns over the stacked receiver set, but once the slot receiver goes in motion across the formation, McCain follows him and carries him down the field on his wheel route.
As the play progresses, you can see how McCain does a nice job avoiding any traffic to stay on top of the slot wheel route while Curl has a fairly easy job of looking after the tight end working to the flat after staying in to chip the edge rusher. Forrest has a tough job playing the deep middle with a deep over route that acts as bait in front of him while a deep post runs down the field. Forrest doesn’t take the bait and instead does a great job identifying the threat and turning to run down the field and eventually intercepting the deep shot.
This is a fairly standard look for a secondary with a free safety working the deep middle, the strong safety covering the tight end and the slot corner matching up to the slot receiver. When the Commanders wanted to be orthodox, they essentially made McCain a pure nickel corner and did just that. As I noted in my breakdown of Martin’s skillset, this is something he’s capable of doing if he learns to play a little more disciplined and focus less on trying to be physical.
But the Commanders weren’t always looking to be orthodox and because of the versatility of the three safeties involved, they could move things around on any given play.
This time we see what seems to be a more obvious and orthodox look from the Commanders, however it’s anything but orthodox. On the previous play we saw against the Eagles, they tried to show a two-deep safety look before rotating to a single deep safety post-snap. This time, they flip that script by showing a single deep safety look before rotating to two-deep. Before the snap, Forrest started in the deep middle of the field with McCain aligned over the slot receiver and Curl aligned over the tight end, which is what they ended up doing on the previous play we looked at.
However, once the ball is snapped, Curl steps up into an underneath zone coverage while Forrest rotates to a deep half of the field over the top of Curl. McCain, meanwhile, sinks back to a deep half from his position in the slot to give the Commanders a two-deep safety look post-snap. With the post-snap rotation, the quarterback works to his right where he has a smash concept. Curl is in position to sink back and match the corner route from the tight end, so the quarterback opts to try and get the ball out quickly to the outside receiver breaking underneath. Curl is able to read the play well and drives down on the receiver, landing a strong hit as the ball arrives.
With such a versatile group of safeties, particularly with Curl and McCain, the Commanders could switch up their looks a lot within that structure and keep opposing offenses from knowing exactly what coverage they were getting each play. This again is something Martin is capable of and in fact in multiple games in college, he was asked to sink back to a deep half from the slot as part of a disguised Tampa-2 coverage, so he’s actually used to running that exact assignment that McCain executed on that play.
While there were plays like that one against the Colts with McCain working deep and Curl stepping up, it was more frequent to see McCain over the slot or in a part of an underneath zone coverage while Curl was either matching the tight end on the other side or working deep as part of a two-deep safety coverage.
However, those roles changed when opposing offenses changed their personnel groups. McCain was the lightest and most agile of the three safeties on the field, making him the best option to matchup against shiftier slot receivers, but that also meant he had the smallest frame. So when teams brought in multiple tight end sets, McCain wasn’t as effective as Curl or Forrest in the box against the run. This is also likely to be true of Martin.
To combat that weakness, when offenses brought in multiple tight ends, the roles of each safety changed slightly.
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