Rookie Carrington Valentine is ascending and Eric Stokes will eventually return from the PUP list. What do the Packers do at cornerback? Matt LaFleur said everything is on the table.
It’s not a problem to work through, but rather a luxury to have.
The Green Bay Packers have a lot of talented cornerbacks on their roster, which could lead to some difficult decisions that have to be made when it comes to playing time, but the team will look at everything to make sure the best players are on the field.
The starting cornerbacks are, of course, Jaire Alexander and Rasul Douglas on the boundary, along with Keisean Nixon in the slot. Eventually, 2021 first-round pick Eric Stokes is going to be activated off the PUP list and become available. Considering how well rookie seventh-round pick Carrington Valentine is playing, he seems deserving of some snaps as well.
“We definitely have to look at something,” said Matt LaFleur on Wednesday in regards to getting Valentine on the field, “because he’s done a lot up to this point. Again, he’s got to keep progressing. There’s still alot of ball in front of us in terms of practices and games, so we will just see how he progresses, but up to this point, he is worthy of getting some snaps, for sure.”
One potential solution would be for Rasul Douglas to move to safety, a position where there is still a lot of question marks. What we know at the moment is that Darnell Savage is going to be one of the starters, but Rudy Ford, Jonathan Owens, have rotated in next to Savage and now it appears to be Tarvarius Moore’s turn. As of late, rookie Anthony Johnson has seen some sporadic reps with the starters as well.
Earlier in the offseason during the NFL Combine, GM Brian Gutekunst was asked about the idea of moving Douglas to safety. Gutekunst does believe that because of Douglas’ skill set to attack the ball, play with his eyes, take good angles, and the instincts that he possesses, it is a transition that he could make.
LaFleur was asked a similar question before Wednesday’s practice, and he too, is open to the idea of Douglas playing safety.
“Potentially,” said LaFleur about moving Douglas. “It’s trying to find those best five. We are going to look at everything and try to put our best people to make plays, and Rasul is one of those guys. We had Sul in there at the nickel position last year quite a bit, so he has a really high football IQ. He understands the jobs of really everybody on the back end, but we will see where it goes.”
In moving Douglas to safety, for the time being at least, it would allow Valentine to line up across from Alexander as one of the starters on the boundary. Stokes would still have to be worked back into the mix upon his return, but this does alleviate some of the congestion at the top of the cornerback depth chart, and hopefully bolsters the safety position in the process as well.
Now, with that said, there is nothing up to this point that has taken place on the practice field to suggest that this is a transition the Packers and Douglas are going to make either. Ultimately, LaFleur does want the five best defensive backs on the field, a phrase we’ve often heard him use when discussing the offensive line, however, there are very much differences between the two position groups when it comes to executing that plan.
“That’s certainly a possibility,” said LaFleur on making the move from cornerback to safety. “You could absolutely do that. There’s different requirements in terms of just coming up and fitting some of the runs, there’s different responsibilities and a total different position even though they are classified as defensive backs the criteria is a little bit different between a cornerback and a safety and even the nickel.”
At this point, moving Douglas to safety is nothing more than an option that the Packers have and appear to be somewhat open to. But it’s one that should be worth considering given the talent and playmaking at cornerback coupled with the unknowns at safety.
