Seattle Seahawks safety Marquise Blair is confident that he can play the nickel back position in his second year in the NFL while Jamal Adams and Quandre Diggs occupy the two safety spots.
“I feel like I can cover,” Blair told reporters over a Zoom call on Monday. “I feel like I can blitz. I can fit in run gaps. So yeah, just everything that nickel does.”
Blair has asserted this conviction despite his testimony that he has no prior experience in that slot. He is more than willing to give it a shot, however.
“Everything was brand new to me (last year), so really it’s just re-learning everything,” he said. “I feel like it’s easier. I knew what I was doing, but you still don’t want to mess up. Now I’m just rolling.”
Coach Pete Carroll believes the young safety needs to get reps and ease into things.
“He’s just gotta get there and get the reps and get comfortable with it,” Carroll said. “He can do everything you need him to do there. He just hasn’t had the background of experience doing it. He’s a rook at that spot. But we’ve conveyed to him the different aspects of it are like this as a safety, like he’s played before. And like that. So he just has to incorporate it all.”
Carroll stated that Blair has shown potential as a ballhawk, but must improve his coverage skills, having already displayed promise as a hard-hitting player in the vein of former Seahawks safety Kam Chancellor.
“He’s in a spot where the ball comes his way a lot,” Carroll said. “And he’s a ballplayer; a ballhawk type of kid. It’s a cool spot for him. He’s got to work on his coverage stuff, bring him along in all of that; the combinations of stuff he does there. But the fact that he can pressure from there and get his hits from there. We’ll see. It’s going to take some time. We have a month to figure it out.”
We will see what Blair brings to the table as a nickel corner if the 2020 season proceeds without interruption.
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