What S Jeremy Chinn brings to the Washington Commanders

Breaking down what the Commanders are getting in new free agent S Jeremy Chinn

The Washington Commanders made an interesting decision to sign former Panthers safety Jeremy Chinn on a one-year deal during their busy wave of free agent signings last week. Chinn was once runner up to former Commanders defensive end Chase Young in defensive rookie of the year voting back in 2020, but much like Young he’s been hit by injuries and seen his career stall as a result of those injuries and due to some misuse of his skillset. 

Chinn is an incredible athlete. He’s listed at 6-foot-3, 220 pounds, which is big for a modern safety. In the current NFL, when you see a safety that size, they’re almost instantly considered a hybrid linebacker option. But even at that size he’s still one of the highest graded safeties ever by Relative Athletic Score (RAS), which gathers all the available athletic testing measurements from the NFL combine and such events in order to rank athletes and give a perspective on their relative athletic ability compared to other players playing the same position. RAS gave Chinn a perfect score for both the free safety and strong safety position. 

Chinn started his career so brightly in Carolina under Jason Simmons. Simmons was the defensive pass game coordinator and secondary coach for the Panthers in 2020 and 2021, Chinn’s first two years in the league. During those seasons, Chinn played as a safety and as a hybrid linebacker type, something Dan Quinn used a lot of in Dallas with the likes of Jayron Kearse. When Simmons left in 2022, the Panthers then tried to change Chinn’s role by moving him into more of a big nickel role, where he’d often line up over the slot and match up against both small, shifty slot receivers and big physical receiving tight ends. 

That switch in role, along with a few significant injuries, has derailed the start Chinn had to his career. The Commanders will obviously be hoping that reuniting with Simmons and switching him back to that hybrid safety/linebacker role will enable Chinn to get back on track with the promising start he made to his career. But as a result of his role changing the past few years, it’s been tough to find reps of him actually playing in a safety or linebacker spot that I would expect him to play in Washington. I’ve studied games from both 2022 and 2023 to try and find what I could of him in those positions. 

When given the opportunity to play safety in the past few years, Chinn proved to be a valuable asset in the run game. 

This clip shows two examples of Chinn’s ability in the run game from the safety spot. In the first play of the clip, the Lions motion receiver Amon-Ra St.Brown across the formation as an extra blocker on the left side of the line. Teams like to do this on duo schemes so that the receiver can insert into the blocking scheme and block the safety, forcing the outside cornerback to then step up and fit the run too, which typically cornerbacks struggle with. But because of Chinn, the corner isn’t required at all here. Chinn rotates down from deep to join the box as a run defender. Once the ball is snapped, he charges up to the line of scrimmage and takes on St.Brown head on. St.Brown is one of the better blocking receivers in the league, the Lions love him for this type of play, but Chinn blows him up and drives him back towards the running back. The runner attempts to make a cut inside of St.Brown, but Chinn is there to make the stop immediately. 

The second play of the clip is very similar with the Steelers aligning a receiver tight to the right of the formation and having him insert into the blocking scheme at the snap of the ball. Just like before, Chinn anticipates the receiver blocking and charges down to the line of scrimmage to meet him in the hole. He stands up the receiver and then sheds the block as the back approaches, peeling off to make the tackle for a minimal gain. 

Chinn also proved reliable on runs to the perimeter. 

This time we see the Seahawks looking to run a crack toss scheme to the right. Chinn begins the play nearly 10 yards off the line of scrimmage, but as soon as he spots the ball being tossed to the running back, he charges down to the edge. He knows on these toss schemes, the offense is looking to pin the edge defenders inside and create a path to the edge for the running back. That means Chinn is the one responsible for re-establishing that edge. He does exactly that, charging down to the line of scrimmage and getting to the edge, taking on the tight end looking to block him. The running back gets strung all the way out to the sideline and Chinn is able to get off his block to force the back out of bounds behind the original line of scrimmage for a loss of yards. 

It’s not just aggressively charging downhill and taking on blocks that Chinn is good at either. He shows a good understanding for what the run scheme is trying to do and where the runner could be looking to cut back into.