Cardinals’ Secondary Summer School 2025

Are new lesson plans in the Cardinals’ pass coverage techniques a priority?

Pictured above are three significant building blocks of the Arizona Cardinals’ 2025 secondary: S Budda Baker, CB Garrett Williams and CB Max Melton.

S Budda Baker

Budda Baker heads into year 9 with 4 NFL All-Pro awards (two 1st team, two 2nd team) and 7 Pro Bowls.

Is there any safety in the NFL who runs the alley and takes down the ball carriers the way Budda Baker consistently does?

2025 Role Possibilities:

• Team Captain
• Game plan advisor
• Cover 2 safety
• Box safety versus the run and in playing the flat in zone coverage

CB Garrett Williams

It should be interesting to see what the Cardinals’ coaches’ plans are for Garrett Williams this season. Garrett is ultra versatile. He can play outside corner, slot corner and free safety —- all three positions at a very high and potentially masterful level.

The coaches’ role for Garrett Williams in 2024 was curious. They seemed to want to disguise him in different areas of the field. He is called a slot CB, yet when games were on the line, too often the coaches did not assign GW to the opponents’ top slot WR. Hard to fathom, given the alternatives, isn’t it?

2025 Role Possibilities:

• Starter at outside CB
• Primarily employed as the team’s slot CB
• Employed at times at a Cover 2 safety
• Zone coverage bandit

CB Max Melton

Max Melton started to play his best football during the Cardinals’ winning streak before the bye week. What makes him special for the Cardinals, in addition to his high upside in Cover 2 and Cover 3 zones is his man coverage ability. Dude runs a 4.39 and jumps 40.5”. Look at Max track down Ohio St, stud RB TreVeyon Henderson to save a TD. This is truly outstanding effort and speed:

2025 Role Possibilities:

• Starter at RCB
• Designated matchup man coverage “go-to guy”
• At times, playing slot CB versus teams with good dual slot WRs

So, Budda, Garrett and Max are the first three buildings block for the Cardinals’ secondary in 2025.

Then, which players in the secondary will emerge as the next three building blocks?

My hunch?

• S Dadrion Taylor Demerson —- possible starter at FS
• CB Will Johnson —- possible starter at LCB
• CB Elijah Jones —- possible starter at LCB and inserted at RCB when Max Melton is moved into the slot or used as designated man cover assignee.

In the mix:

• S Jalen Thompson —- box safety and sub package contributor
• CB Starling Thomas V—- backup to Max Melton at RCB and designated man coverage assignee.
• CB Kei’Trel Clark —- backup for Garrett Williams in the slot.
• CB Denzel Burke —- cover 2 and 3 zone CB

ROTB Question: Which three players (after Budda, Garrett and Max) do you see merging as the Cardinals’ building blocks?

The State Farm 2nd Year Leap?

Symbol for what’s to come in the Cardinals’ secondary?

Cardinals Secondary Summer School 2025:

Syncing up the team’s zone and man coverages in the secondary and with the linebackers during OTAs, mini-camps and training camp has to be Nick Rallis’ number one challenge and priority, especially now that the Cardinals have much improved run stopping and pass rushing talent.

That said, it would be very wise, imo, for Jonathan Gannon to use at least two of the pre-season games (2 series or so per game) with the starters as key opportunities to synchronize the pass coverages, especially in light of the young talent in the secondary and at inside linebacker.

Great defense involves superb communication that is developed through hundreds of reps. While it is a standard practice to rotate defensive linemen in order to keep then playing fast and powerful, this year it may be wise for Nick Rallis to try to settle on a specific lineup of linebackers, cornerbacks and safeties that would ensure the Cardinals of an advantageous semblance of continuity.

Iconic UCLA basketball coach John Wooden maintained a philosophy that (to paraphrase) “if you have two very good players at one position, start one of them and play him the most minutes you can —- because that way, at least one player is happy, instead of two players walking around unhappy.”

Aside from committing to a player’s development and building the player’s confidence, what John Wooden’s philosophy tries to ensure is the precious value of continuity.

For two years we have seen the Cardinals shuffle players in and out on defense like hockey shifts —- and that strategy, while it gave numerous players the opportunity to play —- consistently appeared to detract from the team’s continuity.

Did you know that opposing QBs versus the Cardinals were able to complete 4 out of every 5 passes?

More on this later.

With all the impressive depth of talent that the Cardinals now possess on defense, it would be tempting to try play them all, at times. But, for the sake of continuity, especially in being a zone coverage-heavy defense, such temptation should take a back seat to trying to keep the best players on the field as a unified whole.

Some pundits are speculating that the Cardinals, now that they have lost CB Sean Murphy-Bunting for the season, will be looking to sign a veteran CB. In my opinion, the Cardinals are better off focusing in on the impressively diverse talent they have acquired at the cornerback position. For three reasons; (1) one of the great advantages of working with younger players is that the coaches get to teach them their own methods, whereas with veterans they typically are inured to other methods. (2) For whatever reasons, the past two years, the younger players at CB have played better than the older ones, which may further corroborate point #1. (3) Look at how well and quickly the Chiefs and Eagles incorporated their young draft picks in their secondaries by starting them and committing to them from day one. Good, young secondaries are in vogue these days.

Furthermore, in light of the loss of Sean Murphy-Bunting, while the CB talent and depth is more than sufficient, it may be of even greater importance for the Cardinals to hold on tight to veteran safety Jalen Thompson for his leadership and versatility, assuming that JT can agree to playing a more niched role in the defense this season.

For the past couple of years the Cardinals’ zone coverages have been very easy to exploit. It has been difficult to understand how Gannon’s zones are being taught, because so much of what we have seen in terms of stationary feet, receivers easily crossing the faces of linebackers without any real legitimate attempt to cover them through their zones and preposterously over-excessive cushions have been alarming.

Effective zones involve man-to-man principles within each area of the zone. Every team needs the athletes to do it —- and this is exactly why inside linebackers today are 225 with 4.4-4.5 speed.

Eagles’ fans and pundits were often frustrated with Jonathan Gannon’s coverage schemes and lack of aggression, as articulated in this December 2022 “Inside Eagles” article:

Dissecting theories on Jonathan Gannon’s perceived lack of aggression (insidetheiggles.com)

2024 NFC West Pressure Valves:

As most of you know, I am of the Hubie Brown school of thought that defensive pressure can be best gauged by how many times defenders get their hands on the ball.

Team —— Pass Breakups —— Interceptions —— QB RTG

• ARI —————26 ————————-9————————102.7
• LAR ————-40 ————————14————————100.5
• SF —————-46 ————————-11————————-96.3
• SEA ————-39 ————————–13 ————————97.4

Do you notice that the team with the most combined PBUs and INTs had the lowest QB RTG?

The Cardinals’ completion percentage on defense was 74.9% while the Rams’, 49ers’ and Seahawks’ were all tied at 70.0%

Think of that, dudes, virtually 4 of every 5 passes versus the Cardinals’ defense were completed, throughout an entire season.

Jonathan Gannon appears to have given Nick Rallis the full autonomy to coordinate, run and call the Cardinals’ defense. While Rallis’ defensive alignments and basic schemes appear to be very much akin to the ones that Jonathan Gannon ran with the Eagles, Nick Rallis, by necessity, with an assist from Budda Baker, has expanded the team’s run and pass blitz packages in a highly creative manner. The new knowledge of Rallis’ schemes recently gleaned by the Cardinals’ rookie 2nd round pick, CB Will Johnson, had him sounding very excited.

Therefore, one can hope that the much of the Cardinals’ 2025 Secondary Summer School will involve new and astute lesson plans in the teaching, coordination and efficiency of man, zone and combo coverages.

The 2025 NFC West Pressure Valve numbers are apt to be of paramount importance. Right now, it’s a clean slate. Anyone want to volunteer to track those numbers on a weekly basis?