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Playoffs November 9, 2017

Ferguson: Breaking down Carter’s transition to defensive back

Matt Smith/CFL.ca

CFL.ca
@TSN_Marsh

If someone walked up to you as training camp started in June and said, “Duron Carter will finish the regular season as a defensive back for the Saskatchewan Roughriders,” you likely would’ve raised an eyebrow, as many did, when Chris Jones made the move to put Carter there heading into Week 18 on the road in Calgary.

The move came as a surprise to many, and I admit when Jones told the media “quite honestly, I’m not sure he (Carter) isn’t a better corner than he is a receiver” ahead of the Stampeders game I damn near spit out my morning coffee.

What a ludicrous thing to say. Despite his ups and downs, tantrums and touchdowns alike, Duron Carter has been one of the most dangerous offensive playmakers in the CFL since arriving in 2013.

Including this season, Carter has caught 259 passes for close to 4,000 yards and 25 touchdowns in his CFL career.

AND YOU WANTED TO MAKE HIM A DEFENSIVE BACK?!?

So it was with great interest, hype and a healthy twitter feud with his opposing quarterback that week in Bo Levi Mitchell that Duron Carter became a defensive back and we all tuned in. What I was surprised to find was a player that looked like a defensive back, not a receiver playing defensive back.

Sure, his number looks weird, and maybe even his face mask or other apparel you might stereotype as that of a football receiver, but take the previous knowledge of his name and history away while watching the final three Saskatchewan games as I have and you’ll find a player capable of holding his own on defence.

I set out to determine the strengths and weaknesses of Duron Carter — the defender — ahead of Saturday’s Eastern Semi-Final in Ottawa, where an interception or two could take his 2017 story from noteworthy to legendary.

I graded every Roughriders defensive back – excluding SAM linebacker – for the final three games of 2017 which Carter played in. The grading scale ranged from 1-5 with one being a busted coverage, two a bad play, three an average play, four a good play and five a great play.

I also tracked number of targets directed towards receivers directly covered by Carter and other Riders defensive backs to see if there is any truth to the idea quarterbacks were ‘picking’ on number 89 down the stretch.

Here is how the snaps played, targets, catches allowed and overall grades broke down.

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On the very first in-game defensive snap for Duron Carter in the CFL, Chris Jones sent a message that this wasn’t some goofy experiment, rather a tactical move with a player expected to do a bit of everything when Jones blitzed Carter from his boundary corner spot:

Five plays later, Bo Levi Mitchell and the Stampeders decided to challenge Carter for the first time by motioning slotbacks away from Carter in hopes of creating an isolated matchup for speedy wideout Marken Michel:

Michel hurt his hamstring while Carter held his own with some assistance.

This is a constant theme in Carter’s three-game defensive adventure. Not once in the 98 defensive snaps played over the final three weeks of the season has Carter been asked to operate alone on an island. There is always safety help over the top or Ed Gainey covering the flats while Carter plays high and safe.

Carter is not the physically-dominating type, which makes him unlikely to factor into the run game often. That’s not a big part of playing boundary corner anyway, so it’s unfair to expect Carter to bring down a thick power back like Jerome Messam:

Or Montreal Alouettes running back Tyrell Sutton:

But credit where credit is due for Carter, who has tried at times to be more involved in the ground game.

Perhaps the most impressive part of Carter’s gradual adaptation to the defensive backfield is his ability to see things from a receiver perspective, trust his eyes and react accordingly. The best example of this came in Week 19 at home against Montreal. The second Carter sees Nik Lewis start to bubble horizontally, he shoots the gap and nearly comes up with a pick-six without having to return the ball:

A week later in a one-score game midway through the fourth quarter, and backed up against his goal line, Duron again trusted his eyes and fell off a vertical route to dislodge a pass attempt from Mike Reilly to Adarius Bowman. Pretty good stuff for a guy making his third start at defensive back.

Those instincts are what have made Duron Carter’s transition to defensive back so smooth. He’s played the game for so long that standing on the other side of the line of scrimmage isn’t foreign, it’s just a new perspective.

Remember earlier when the Stampeders tried to motion slotbacks away from the play to create an isolated matchup for Marken Michel and Carter? That failed, so later, Calgary tried to overwhelm Carter’s instincts by motioning a cavalry of Stamps towards him and running a fake wide receiver screen with a vertical route down the sideline.

Duron didn’t take the bait. Another impressive play from a new defensive back who Calgary probably expected to jump the screen and leave a man wide open down the sideline.

Duron Carter is in no way a perfect defensive back. There are still moments of doubt, such as the play below where Ed Gainey and Carter’s lack of communication meant neither really factored into the play before the front seven saved the day:

All players have flaws, weaknesses and tendencies. Carter is vulnerable in one-on-one tackling situations and his eyes sometimes still lead him astray. What matters are his strengths. He plays the ball well in the air – duh – he’s instinctive without being overly aggressive and he has great range to make up for when he does make a mistake.

Perhaps Carter’s greatest strength is his ability to add a layer of thought-processing to the usually standardized routine of CFL quarterbacks.

When a known name is playing ‘out of position’, quarterbacks can at times be guilty of favouring the matchup too much, or ‘forcing’. Bo Levi Mitchell would be the first to tell you that happened a couple of times in Week 19, including this play, where Carter appears to have jumped the out route, leaving a man free down the sideline only to have Gainey swoop in for the easy interception as the ever-present help behind Carter:

Seeing Carter in coverage as being more attractive than an established defensive back is a mental trap Trevor Harris will have to avoid Sunday if he wants to win his first career CFL playoff start. If he falls into Chris Jones’ and Duron Carter’s game of cat and mouse, Carter’s story could be told for a long time to come.