Status Report: Nickel Defense

  

courtesy: John Leyba – The Denver Post

This is not meant to offend the subject, nor fans of the player, but Karl Paymah and Domonique Foxworth have more in common than their draft class. The two came via a trio of corners from the 2005 draft class, of which Darrent Williams also belonged. Now of the three, only Paymah remains. 

With Foxworth it seemed there was hardly ever a time he actually prevented the ball from getting to the receiver. Once the ball got there, he was most likely to get the tackle, but the ball shouldn’t have gotten there in the first place. Now, I’ve never felt this way about Paymah, but last week I got nostalgia in his effort against the San Diego Chargers. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

“There’s always a weakness in every defense,” Champ Bailey said. “The thing about [Sunday] was Philip Rivers found every little weakness that we had and took advantage of it. He’s a great quarterback. He’s playing better than most quarterbacks in the league this year. My hat goes off to them because they exploited a lot of our weakness. We know what they are. We can improve on that, and we’ll play better than what we did.”

That cringe hasn’t left my body yet, you know the one where an opposing offense is in the redzone and the Broncos are in nickle or worse dime-coverage. It seems as if Paymah was always in the wrong position to make a play, whether it be behind the receiver or with his back turned to the play. Granted, this may be due to a lot of factors, not just his natural ability. He is very fast, a 4.32 40 at the combine, he was drafted specifically with the idea of coming in as the nickel back. Two-weeks into his new roll though, I’m not sure if this guy can hack it. 

Enter rookie Jack Williams, where has this guy been? He killed in preseason and throughout training camp, has he not put in the effort since to get a crack at nickle back? Williams has yet to log a single stat in the season thus far. It’s time for action, either Paymah steps up or we should see Williams in today.