One of the questions surrounding the Houston Texans’ selection of former LSU cornerback Derek Stingley is how he will fit in with coach Lovie Smith’s patented Tampa 2 scheme.
Laurie Fitzpatrick at the Draft Wire labeled the Texans as one of the league’s most improved rosters following the 2022 NFL draft. While lauding the pick of Stingley, she asked the question football minds have been pondering since the acquisition of the Bayou Bengal.
In round one (No. 3 overall), the Texans selected the best cornerback in the draft, Derek Stingley Jr., from LSU. When it comes to being a lockdown corner, Stingley outperformed. Ever since his freshman year, his talent has been undeniable, but after a few lower body injuries, his stock was starting to drop.
That was until his Pro Day, where he reassured NFL scouts and ran a 4.37 forty-time, and also looked extremely fluid in his on-field drills.
Seeing Kyle Hamilton at 13 to the #Texans in more and more mock drafts… sign me tf up pic.twitter.com/3GcvfhU738
— Jordan Pun (@Texans_Thoughts) April 27, 2022
The only question we have now, is how he fits in Lovie Smith’s zone defense. Stingley is a dominant man-coverage cornerback, and Smith runs a lot of zone, it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
Texans linebacker coach Miles Smith actually answered this question earlier in the offseason.
During media availability for the new coaching staff on Feb. 22, Smith was asked about the modernization of the Tampa 2 and elaborated on how it has evolved since he got involved coaching the scheme in 2015 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, his father’s most previous NFL stop.
“We made a lot of tweaks,” Smith said. “I think sometimes people confuse, hey, you can be another Cover 2 type team and you think we’re real close, and we always like to say, yeah, we may be close, but we’re more cousins than we are brothers.
“So, at this point, our defense has kind of turned into something unique, and it helped out being in college. We were able to see elements that were going to come to pro football a little bit sooner where we were able to adjust things a little bit. Going into my seventh year in the system, I’ll say we’re a very different defense than we were in 2015, our first year.”
Smith said that taking the Tampa 2 to the University of Illinois from 2016-20 as the football team’s scheme helped them adapt the defense to the unique offenses at the collegiate level, and also prepare for talent that would eventually come into the NFL.
“They do some different things with some option things, different type of pulling systems that just were not introduced into the NFL until now,” said Smith. “But college come in, obviously football, if you find stuff that teams can exploit, they’re going to continue to do it. That has started to trickle off to the NFL.”
The younger Smith at least doesn’t see the Texans’ scheme as the same that his father was part of with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as a linebackers coach from 1996-2000 or as coach of the Chicago Bears from 2004-12. If the Smith’s Tampa 2 has truly evolved throughout the years, then it should be able to use the strengths of Stingley and succeed.
