In 2022, the Miami Dolphins’ cornerbacks as a group allowed 159 completions on 258 targets for 2,303 yards, 15 touchdowns, five interceptions, 36 pass deflections, 10 penalties, an opponent completion rate of 55.8%, and an opponent passer rating of 92.5, seventh-worst in the league.
In their efforts to improve a defense that finished fourth in DVOA against the run and 25th against the pass, the Dolphins have added two very big names to their group this offseason. They hired legendary defensive coordinator Vic Fangio in February, making him the NFL’s highest-paid coach at his position.
Then, on Sunday, the Dolphins traded a 2023 draft pick and tight end Hunter Long to the Rams for the services of cornerback Jalen Ramsey. This was a salary offload move by the Rams, who were on the books for Ramsey’s 2023 cap number of $17 million as part of the five-year, $100 million contract extension he signed in 2020. Now, the Dolphins have one year in which Ramsey’s dead cap of $35.5 million makes any release prohibitive, a 2024 cap hit and dead cap hit of $18.5 million, and a 2025 situation in which Ramsey’s cap hit is $19.5 million, and the dead money doesn’t exist.
A pretty good short-term deal for a cornerback who will turn 29 on October 24, and had an up-and-down season in 2022. Per Pro Football Focus, Ramsey allowed 56 catches on 86 targets for 712 yards, 234 yards after the catch, seven touchdowns, four interceptions, 11 pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 98.6. Good for body temperature, perhaps not so good for coverage. It was a down season after Ramsey’s 2021, in which he allowed 72 catches on 117 targets for 873 yards, 354 yards after the catch, five touchdowns, four interceptions, 15 pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 84.5. Ramsey, as on and off as his coverage style has always been, was a primary reason the Rams nabbed their second Lombardi Trophy as a franchise at the end of the 2021 season.
Ramsey was clearly happy about the trade.
Just chopped it up with Dolphins new star CB @jalenramsey about his excitement joining Miami’s loaded D, and what’s ahead. New deal for Ramsey secured by agent @DavidMulugheta just mins before going on stage at @HBCUBotBrains. pic.twitter.com/NIS0DPBYUI
— Cameron Wolfe (@CameronWolfe) March 12, 2023
Now, it’s up to Fangio to put Ramsey in the best possible position to succeed — and based on Fangio’s track record, we’re going to take the over in a positive sense. But what might that look like on the field, based on what both Fangio and Ramsey have done in the past?
What are the principles of Vic Fangio's defense?
Fangio has been doing his thing in the NFL since 1995, so there’s a lot of data reflecting the changes in his defensive philosophy over time. But in his last two stops, as the Chicago Bears’ defensive coordinator from 2015-2018, and as the Denver Broncos’ head coach from 2019-2021, the personnel was obviously different, but the principles were pretty much the same.
In 2018, per Sports Info Solutions, the Bears played the second-most snaps with 2-4-5 personnel (50%), the 11th-most man coverage (11%), the most snaps with a light box (78%), the second-most with a two-high coverage shell (76%), and his defense blitzed on just 19% of their snaps, which ranked 25th in the league.
The 2021 Broncos played the NFL’s most snaps in 2-4-5 (54%), the most man coverage (42%), the second-most snaps with a light box (75%), the most with a two-high coverage shell (72%), and his defense blitzed on 26% of their snaps, which ranked 13th in the league.
Adjustments for personnel along the way, of course — no coach is just going to throw his guys out there into one scheme whether they’re attuned to it or not — but you get the idea. The 2018 Bears played a lot of Cover-1 with a decent amount of Cover-3, while the 2021 Broncos took that kind of man coverage distribution and mixed in the most Cover-6 snaps on passing attempts in the NFL — they were in Quarter/Quarter/Half on 37 opponent attempts.
So, we have a pretty good idea what the Dolphins will be running — it’ll be a Fangio-style defense, which is what most people in the NFL want right now, authored by the man himself.
How does Ramsey fit the prototypes?
Let’s look at how Ramsey fared in those concepts last season. We have a bit to go on, because the Rams’ defense, led by Raheem Morris, played to type some of the time. The 2022 Rams played 2-4-5 on 28% of their snaps, the seventh-most in the NFL. They played with a light box on 67% of their snaps, third-most in the league. The Rams blitzed on 27% of their snaps, which ranked 11th in the NFL, and they ran two-high on 64% of their snaps, which ranked sixth.
The radical difference was in coverage — the 2022 Rams played in man coverage on 18% of their snaps, the lowest rate in the NFL. In zone coverage (Cover-2, Cover-3, Cover-4, Cover-6) last season, Ramsey allowed 29 receptions on 47 targets for 378 yards, three touchdowns, three interceptions, four pass deflections, an opponent completion rate of 61.7%, and an opponent passer rating of 81.7.
In man coverage (Cover-0, Cover-1, and 2-Man), Ramsey gave up 11 catches on 17 targets for 177 yards, one touchdown, one interception, three pass breakups, an opponent completion rate of 64.7%, and an opponent passer rating of 94.5.
If we go back to 2020, when Ramsey played in his most Fangio-style defense to date under defensive coordinator (and former Bears outside linebackers coach in 2017 and 2018 under Fangio himself), Ramsey allowed 35 receptions on 72 targets for 357 yards, four touchdowns, one interception, an opponent completion rate of 48.6%, and an opponent passer rating of 81.8. A lot of boom-or-bust (shutdown or touchdown) there, which tends to typify Ramsey’s playing personality.
With all the numbers out of the way, it’s time to go to the tape and investigate what Fangio and the Dolphins are getting in their newest chess piece.
What can Fangio do to make the most of Ramsey's skills?
At this point in his career, Ramsey is ideally more of a “roamer” and overhang cornerback than a pure press-man or press-match defender. Like a lot of bigger cornerbacks, he can get turned around pretty easily against receivers with quick moves, and playing in off-coverage mitigates that to a degree. Only one of Ramsey’s interceptions in 2022 came when he was pressing the receiver, and that happened against the Seattle Seahawks in Week 18, when he got in front of DK Metcalf in Cover-3 on a crossing route.
If you want Ramsey to work press-man against the NFL’s better receivers, your best hope is to have him establish inside leverage to the boundary, with that boundary acting as an extra defender. In instances like this in Week 1 against Buffalo’s Stefon Diggs out of Cover-1, Ramsey’s just fine.
The back of the end zone also works as an extra defender, as it did on this pass breakup against the Packers and receiver Christian Watson in Week 15. Ramsey can completely envelop receivers when he’s converging upon them with the right speed and leverage.
As Ramsey showed from the slot against Davante Adams of the Raiders in Week 13, he’s also great when he can come down and break things up.
Interestingly enough, one of Ramsey’s interceptions last season came out of a scenario in which he’s far more vulnerable — when he’s asked to backpedal and trail. This happened against the Broncos in Week 16. Ramsey was beaten out of the slot by tight end Greg Dulcich, but as Russell Wilson decided to fixate on Dulcich when he was double-covered in the end zone, thus ignoring open receiver Freddie Swain on the deep over from the other side, Ramsey got a gift there.
Fangio will maximize what Ramsey has to offer.
This trade wouldn’t have happened without Fangio’s endorsement, so he obviously sees enough in Ramsey’s skill set to envision the right things to do. And as he said at his opening press conference on February 20, Fangio spent his “gap year” of 2022 studying other defenses to bring in new ideas.
“There’s a few things that I came up with that I’m anxious to try. We’ll try them in OTAs at some point and then in training camp as a good fit for the other things we do. But what’s going to be most important is tailoring what we do to our players and to the opponent that we’re playing for that week. So there may be things that we did at previous stops that we won’t do much here because it doesn’t fit our players and vice versa; we might do something a lot that we didn’t do other places because it’s a better fit for our players. And sometimes it’s a better – you might think it’d be great to do something because it fits a certain player really good, but you really have to think about how it fits all 11, and what’s the best way to stop somebody from scoring too many points.”
It will be fascinating to see how Jalen Ramsey fits into all of that.
