Silver And Black Pride
The Las Vegas Raiders have an open competition at cornerback during training camp, as the coaching staff is looking for the young players on the depth chart to step up and earn a roster spot. In the preseason opener against the Seattle Seahawks, Kyu Blu Kelly was the corner who rose to the occasion.
According to Pro Football Focus, Kelly was the Raiders’ second-highest graded defender (83.6), and that mark was good enough to finish tied for 10th among cornerbacks league-wide. The primary reason for this is that he was targeted twice and allowed just one completion for five yards, picking up a defensive stop and two pass breakups (one via a target to another defender) in the process.
The third-year pro, who is on the bubble, made a strong case to make the 53-man roster last Thursday. So, let’s check out the tape and break down his performance.
This first play isn’t going to make the highlight reel as the Seahawks gain about seven to eight yards after the missed tackle by Greedy Vance Jr. (No. 41). But Kelly does a good job of preventing a bad play from being worse by making the tackle short of the sticks and preventing the first down, or more.
He’s on the Cover 4 side of the Cover 6 call for the Raiders, and Seattle has a good play design to defeat the coverage. The seam route from the slot receiver keeps Vance in the middle of the field initially, and then the China (short in) route from the outside receiver occupies Vance more and essentially serves as a screen for the running back on the swing route.
Granted, Vance does a good job of getting to the right spot, but he doesn’t finish the play. Luckily, Kelly recognizes the route concept, sees that no receivers are coming into his area and rallies to the football to help his teammate.
Again, the offense still gets the “win” here. But Kelly’s efforts give the defense a chance to get off the field by getting stops on second and third down.
Here, we’ll get another example of the Stanford product covering for a teammate.
Las Vegas is in Cover 3 while Seattle runs a slant-flat concept at the top of the screen. That means the linebacker (No. 42, Matt Jones) is responsible for taking away the slant route from the outside receiver. Jones does a decent job initially, forcing quarterback Drew Lock to hold onto the ball and scramble. However, the linebacker vacates his area on the scramble drill, leaving the wide receiver wide open in the middle of the field.
Now, Kelly can do a better job of continuing to work for depth as the deep third defender, but that ends up being a moot point because he sees the open man and converges on the receiver. To finish, the cornerback has a perfectly timed hit with enough force to jar the ball loose at the catch point, resulting in an incompletion and...
