Hard to believe Cooper DeJean \u2013 the youngest 1st-team all-pro in Eagles history and youngest player ever to score a Super Bowl return touchdown \u2013 has a tackling problem.<\/p>\n
But according to Pro Football Focus, DeJean already has 12 missed tackles in just seven games, most in the NFL.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And his 22.5 percent missed tackle percentage is 28th-highest of 222 defensive backs who\u2019ve played at least 100 snaps so far this year.<\/p>\n
Considering that DeJean was only charged with 11 missed tackles all last year in over 1,000 snaps and a missed tackle percentage of 10.9 \u2013 less than half what it is this year \u2013 it\u2019s fair to wonder what the heck is going on with one of the NFL\u2019s most talented young defensive backs.<\/p>\n
DeJean revealed Wednesday that figuring out how to tackle as a safety is much different than tackling as a corner, and he admitted he\u2019s been struggling with that adjustment.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it’s different,\u201d he said at his locker after practice. \u201cIt’s more different than I thought it was going to be, especially in the run defense part of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cComing downhill, finding the right angles to be able to make a tackle, and when you’re in the middle of the field and guys running straight at you with the ball in their hand, that makes it even tougher.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it’s been something I’ve been trying to grow into over the course of this year. It hasn’t been easy, it’s been a challenge, but I feel like we’ve got great coaches and been getting better at it each and every week.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeJean last year played only 13 percent of his snaps at safety. This year, that number has jumped to 42 percent as he\u2019s transitioned to full-time safety when the Eagles play base, moving to slot corner when the Eagles are in nickel.<\/p>\n
This is a guy who had an iconic pick-6 in the Super Bowl as a rookie and made 1st-team all-pro and the Pro Bowl in his second season. So it\u2019s been surprising to see him struggling so much.<\/p>\n
But safety and corner are completely different animals and ball carriers come at you from different angles.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vic Fangio said Wednesday he doesn\u2019t think playing both safety and nickel has been a problem for DeJean.<\/p>\n
\u201cCooper’s a good player,\u201d Fangio said. \u201cTrust him totally. \u2026 Last year he played corner and nickel. This year he’s playing safety and nickel, so it’s pretty equal.\u201d<\/p>\n
But DeJean said the adjustment has been challenging and the biggest difference is that at safety you\u2019re meeting the ball carrier or receiver later in the play so the offensive player has more chances to adjust his direction, making it tougher to find the right angle to attack.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I\u2019m playing nickel and corner, you’re right up there on the line,\u201d he said. \u201cSo there’s a lot less space a guy can work with and move off of, and it’s less of a bigger collision I guess a lot of the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when you’re coming downhill at safety you could be coming down, he could change his course and then you\u2019ve got to get through the bodies to find out where the running back’s at and then you’ve got to figure out when you can shoot your gap if there is a gap to shoot through or when to play over the top.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd when they’re running full speed through the hole you know you\u2019ve got to understand that’s different and it’s going to be a bigger collision so you\u2019ve got to kind of gather yourself when you’re coming downhill and running to make a tackle.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hard to believe Cooper DeJean \u2013 the youngest 1st-team all-pro in Eagles history and youngest player ever to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6107,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-316871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-eagles-blog","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}