The Seahawks have the Legion of Boom, the secondary that defines excellence in the modern NFL. The unit helmed by Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor and Richard Sherman instills the fear of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy on receivers on a weekly basis. The duo of safeties uses solid and technically sound acts of violence to intimidate opposing pass catchers who seek refuge over the middle of the field. It’s an impressive scheme that requires outstandingly athletic and brutal safeties and opportunistic corners to be successful. Pete Carroll has invested heavily in this unit, using almost 1/5 of his cap space on those three players. That may seem like a sustainable allocation of resources on arguably the best three players on your team, but as we saw last year they completely cratered after suffering the Earl Thomas injury because they could no longer serve their mantra “every last blade of grass” without depth at the position.
The Patriots secondary unit are waiting in the wings to take the mantle of best secondary in the NFL and Belichick spends a similar percentage of his cap on their core secondary. Though, because we’re talking about the Patriots: they employ the same amount of money roughly $18 million on FIVE core players in the defensive backfield rather than Seattle’s three stars. This unit is set to make a splash and should rival the best secondary in football and to do that they need a nickname – That’s where – huh? Do you hear that? Wait, what’s that sound?
[Read more…] about Coffin Corner: Introducing ** The A-Team ** The NFL’s New Best Secondary