Quote Originally Posted by mraynrand View Post
It's a passing league. NITRO is just a smart adjustment. Capers and Trgo both told me that nickle is base. Packers can afford to give up more in the run game if they can stop the pass. Stubby will never change his core philosophy that he will win games on big plays from his offense and limiting the same with his defense.
That's true, but every team can just run dime. The trick is to do things nobody else can. Seattle is a great example. Earl Thomas is maybe the only true center fielder in the whole league. Having a guy who can really do that allows your other safety to be a slow goon who is practically a linebacker. You can run what's almost a college defense 4-4 split, with cover 1 and cover 3 all the time in the NFL. Being the only one who can run a certain type of defense has a way of letting you capitalize on players who are viewed by the rest of the league as tweeners.

What the 2017 Packers seem to have is an embarrassment of riches at safety in a league with a considerable deficit of quality safeties. We use safeties to play safety, to play slot CB, and now LB. I assume the benefit here is that it allows us to make 3-down use from cheap 2-down players like Dial, Jean Francois, Brooks, Martinez, and Ryan. I need to see the all-22 to make a better theory than that.