Whew! Thanks. My blood pressure is down a bit. Have heard good things about Brown from his scout play, and did see Atkinson on special teams.

Don’t forget Collinsworth at safety, Mark. He’ll be a Junior. He saw some actual playing time late in the season. Who are the “sophomore recruited walk-ons” you refer to? Just regular walk-ons who are sophs? Eilar Hardy will be a soph, but he’s hardly a walk-on. I think as long as the young guys can step up and provide decent minutes, our backfield will be just fine (barring major injuries). Keep in mind that good pressure by our beasts up front can decrease the amount of time these guys need to cover anyone. The best cover corners in the league can’t hang with a guy for more than 4 or 5 seconds.

All that said, I don’t disagree that another stud corner in this class would have gone a long way toward making me feel better about the future.

I am worried about the cornerback position long term, and I think that obviously the biggest question going into next year will be A) how quickly can these corners improve and be ready to play against the bevy of great WRs we are going to see next year, and B) we have a massive need to nail 2-3 top flight corners next year.

As long as they can coach up the kids we have, I think we’ll be ok for this year. Bennett, Wood, Brown, Atkinson, and Shepherd are all highly athletic kids who can come in play. The question is how fast they can build up their technique. For this season, I think we will probably see more a 4-2-5 look on passing downs rather than a true nickel. In a nickel, we have 3 corners and two safeties out on the field. In a 4-2-5, you put 2 corners, and 3 safeties (usually one true free safety, and two strong safeties who can drop into the box, or cover the slot). Diaco has used that 4-2-5 look a lot in the past, especially at the start of the 1st season, and towards the end of last season when Slaughter came on strong.

I would expect that until we can see a third player really step up at the corner position and show competence, it is more likely that we’ll see 3 safeties on the field with either Collinsworth, Hardy, or one of the new guys in Procise or Shumate stepping in. I think it would be a lot easier to prepare a young athletic safety to drop down and play a lot of zone coverage over slot (flats, hooks, curls) in a physical manner than it would be to prepare a young corner to go in on nickel situations and play zone or man on the slot, and still be ready for the physical nature of runs in that area of the field. (Unless Shepherd shows himself to be so physically gifted that he is capable of doing that).

If anything, at the start of the season, I would expect that we see Slaughter move down into that 5th spot in the slot like last year, and put Collinsworth or another safety back deep in zone coverage in a cover two. Thats probably the easiest thing to do unless somebody really surprises the staff. Slaughter understands the force/spill rules this defense uses on run plays better than anyone else, and in the slot he would have to know that.

The two walk on safeties are Blake Breslau and Connor Cavalaris. I was wrong – Breslau will be a Senior next year. Cavalaris will be a sophomore. I know Cavalaris was what is called a “preferred walk-on”, and think Breslau meets that criteria as well, meaning they were recruited, started with the team the summer before Freshman year just like the scholarship guys, but do not have a scholarship, at least yet. Think Salvi. Some of these guys play themselves into a scholarship, but more importantly can be valuable contributors on special teams. Cavalaris is fast, with great lower body strength, so who knows.