1. Raiders Against Slot Receivers Players
2. Raiders Against Slot Receivers Win
3. Raiders Against Slot Receivers Game
4. Raiders Against Slot Receivers Game
5. Raiders Against Slot Receivers Odds
6. Raiders Against Slot Receivers 2019

Oakland Raiders wide receiver Amari Cooper, while predominantly used outside the numbers, has quietly become one of the league’s most efficient route runners from the slot. Despite running just 17.9 percent of his routes away from the outside boundary, Cooper has averaged 2.81 yards per route run from the slot in his three-year NFL career. Raiders receivers Antonio Brown and Tyrell Williams will start and play most every offensive snap. Write that in ink, but don’t put the pen away. Williams will play mostly outside opposite Brown, though AB will move all over the formation as Jon Gruden tries to find favorable matchups for his best offensive player.

Raiders Against Slot Receivers Players

In the 2019 NFL season, per Sports Info Solutions, there were 19,933 total quarterback dropbacks. Against those dropbacks, NFL defenses put four defensive backs on the field just 18% of the time (3,579 snaps), while nickel defense (with five defensive backs) ruled the league by far with 59% of all snaps (11,780). And if you want to know how much the NFL isn’t a base defense league anymore, consider this: Defenses lined up in dime coverage (six defensive backs on the field) on 20.9% of total dropbacks (4,091), which means that teams played more dime defense than base defense. The Seahawks were the only team to play base defense more than 50% of the time (67%), and the Cardinals finished second at 37%.

Raiders Against Slot Receivers Win

All this is to say that unless you’re the Seahawks, you’d better have some top-level slot defenders if you want to put a credible pass defense out there in a league where offenses are implementing more kinds of receiver sets and route combinations than ever before.

Raiders Against Slot Receivers Game

And it’s not as if the skill sets required to be a slot defender are the same as those for an outside cornerback. You might be up against a 6-foot-5, 250-pound tight end on first down who can body you right out of the paint, and on the next play, you may have to deal with a small, speedy option-route receiver whose job is to juke you right out of your shoes. And as Richard Sherman once told me in his Seattle days, the thing about playing outside cornerback is that the boundary is your friend. That’s not the case when you’re in the slot, where you’re defending in space pretty much all the time.

Raiders Against Slot Receivers Game

So, which slot defenders were the most effective and valuable to their teams in 2019, and thus should be set up to do the same in 2020? With help from Pro Football Focus’ metrics, and a whole lot of tape study, here’s one list. To avoid small sample-size results, each of these defenders played at least 50% of their snaps in the slot.

Raiders Against Slot Receivers Odds

Raiders Against Slot Receivers 2019

Mike Hilton Chris Harris Jr. Jourdan Lewis Tramon Williams Mackensie Alexander Nickell Robey-Coleman Marlon Humphrey D.J. Hayden Brian Poole K’Waun Williams Tyrann Mathieu