ALL TWENTY-TUESDAY: VERNON HARGREAVES III’S ROOKIE SEASON

Vernon Hargreaves III’s rookie season really was a journey.

As Michael Kist, a contributor to DraftRT, said to me on Twitter, rookie seasons in the NFL often equate to guys trying to drink water through a firehose. I think that analogy is so spot on. There is no greater gap in the sports world than going from college to the the pros – the NFL especially. In their first seasons, players are trying to balance skills and tendencies that got them there while learning how to re-tool and re-wire almost everything they know about how to play the game. All this while learning on the job every Sunday with the responsibility of teammates, a fan base and a franchise, in part, on their shoulders. 

For a cornerback this is even more of a challenging transition because failure is part of the position. Every corner gets beat, and that’s because when you play defense against such talented athletes and playmakers on the other side, you often have to give up something to cover another or there are overlapping gaps in coverage between you and your teammates. That’s just the nature of the game.

For Hargreaves, you could almost see him grow up or grow into his position more and more each week as his rookie season went on, starting from Week 1, which was a big struggle.

Let me start off this film breakdown by saying this, you could argue that no other player on the defense was asked to do more on a play-by-play and drive-by-drive basis than Hargreaves was even from Week 1. From game one of his first year in the NFL, Hargreaves was being asked to play boundary and field corner in base formations and was also shifted inside to nickel corner in formations that called for five or six defensive backs. 

Such responsibility isn’t what it seems like. It’s not just like putting the third-highest overall player as your third cornerback in Madden. Playing slot corner is one of the toughest positions in all of football, especially in today’s NFL. When playing slot corner, players are often left one-on-one with an opposing team’s quickest and savviest route runner. They’re asked to cover the most potential space with the least amount of help or their asked to play in zone coverage in an area that requires them to both read the quarterback and read all surround movement in their peripheral vision.

Hargreaves was asked to do all that against what would be the No. 1 offense in the NFL at Atlanta in his first game as a pro.

Hargreaves learned the difference between college and the NFL real quick that game. In the play above, Hargreaves was playing Mohamed Sanu like he would have played any other receiver in college. He gave him his space and waited to see where his route was going by planning to use his top notch recovery speed to make up for it. But even as he saw the route form, he realized his speed wasn’t enough. Sanu broke on his route, quarterback Matt Ryan saw it, the ball was out and the catch should have been made. In college, you can give that kind of space because most of the time quarterbacks either don’t see it, don’t have the arm to get the ball in there, or the receivers just don’t have the speed to stay that far ahead. In the pros, all three exist in almost every instance.

Hargreaves learned that quickly, and you could tell it had him shaken for a bit.

When Hargreaves felt what game speed was like and wasn’t used to it, he started playing very cautious to not get beat deep. If you don’t play cornerback with confidence, the play above are things that can happen.

That wasn’t even a wide receiver, that was tight end that spun him around like a load of laundry.

In Week 2 against the Cardinals, the head games didn’t stop. Hargreaves went from having to cover Julio Jones and Sanu in week one to Larry Fitzgerald and Michael Floyd in week 2. Fitzgerald was his primary assignment, and from the slot, no less. Putting a savvy route running like Fitzgerald between the numbers is cruel for any defender, let alone a rookie.

I chose the play above an an example because it was against the same route Hargreaves played poorly in Week 1. In this week, he was still too far off his assignment to warrant a no-throw. However, by breaking earlier, he was able to get to his man as the ball did. But he was so focused on getting there because he was playing so far off that he over-ran it and couldn’t play the ball on a floating pass; a rookie mistake.

By the end of the first half, Fitzgerald could basically run any route he wanted and he knew Hargreaves couldn’t cover him. After getting burned a few times early on, Hargreaves began just guessing on routes to try to stay ahead, and the veteran tore him up for it. Hargreaves was trying to remember so many things – keep your feet quick, turn your hips correctly, explode off the right foot, make sure you watch the quarterback, keep an eye on the outside corner, know where your safety help is, know how deep to drop, watch the receiver’s hips – that the simplicities of “stay with your man” got lost. This is why the analogy of trying to drink through a firehose is spot on.

Same route just a different week. In Week 3, Hargreaves was still getting picked on like it was Week 1, only this time it was by Los Angeles’ Case Keenum and Brian Quick, not the No. 1 offense in the NFL.

Now, I will say that part of the spacing issues with Hargreaves was by design. He wasn’t just playing that far off receivers because he felt like it. Formations are designed to give guys space depending on where help comes from and what the linebackers are doing, but it was even in the way Hargreaves played with the space that showed he wasn’t all there confidence-wise.

Hargreaves didn’t know how to recognize routes yet, and because of this, was giving up far too much cushion. This is the reason he was the most targeted cornerback all season. Even though he improved as the year went on, the film the teams had were of Weeks 1-5, and those were the ones showing Hargreaves struggling to keep up and anticipate with guys.

And it wasn’t even against only speed guys. Hargreaves was afraid to get beat deep against a player like Carolina’s Kelvin Benjamin, too. The above play was just poor overall. Not only did Hargreaves not have a good understanding of who Benjamin was as a receiver and route runner, but he also did not take his help correctly either.

The play above is Cover 2 Man, which means it was man coverage by the corners and linebackers and two deep zones by the safeties to help out wherever the needed to. Because the safeties line up inside, their help is usually expected from inside the numbers. So if a receiver runs a deep post route, the corner can cover him hard with his back to the boundary knowing he has help the other way.

Hargreaves knew this and still looked lost. Instead of prioritizing covering the route to the sideline (since he knew he had help if Benjamin went inside), Hargreaves gave up the one area the safety couldn’t get to and gave up the catch. That was both panic and poor preparation.

Hargreaves looked like a broken cornerback mentally in those first five weeks.

But then the Bye Week happened.

Following the Bye Week, Hargreaves was done as the full-time nickel cornerback in such formations. I don’t think it was due to Hargreaves struggling since you don’t really get demoted to playing outside corner, but rather, I think it was more due to the play of Jude Adjei-Barimah being worthy of some playing time. This was the best thing that could have happened for Hargreaves.

Instead of having to juggle how to play every kind of cornerback the team would need him to play against any receiver, Hargreaves focused on just outside assignments. You could tell the mental break was good for him.

In their Week 6 game at San Francisco, as shown above, Hargreaves was even asked to play press (close) coverage for essentially the first time. It worked very well. The competition wasn’t as stout playing against San Francisco as opposed to Atlanta, Arizona and Denver, but regardless of how it happened, the schedule unfolding like it did after the Bye Week was great for Hargreaves’ development.

That fact was made true the following week in a game that carries a bad narrative for Hargreaves. After giving up a first-play catch to his old SEC nemesis Amari Cooper, Hargreaves was on his game. He was still asked to play a mix of off and press coverage against Oakland, but even when he played off coverage, it was with much more confidence.

That truth was made known in the play above, the best play I had seen Hargreaves make all season. In it, his backpedal was smooth, his hips flipped at the right time, he exploded off his first step and he knocked Crabtree out of bounds for a no catch. But what was most important about all that wasn’t the list of all the techniques he performed, it was that he looked natural while he was doing it.

For the first time this season Hargreaves looked like things were coming natural as opposed to you being able to “see him thinking” which is never good.

That confidence carried over into how he fought off Jones in their Round 2 game of 2016.

The play above when compared to the first meeting is night and day. Hargreaves was far less off Jones than before, his hips were in a neutral position as to have the confidence to take him either left or right, and he was able to stay with Jones long enough on a route that broke in two separate directions to force a throwaway.

That, my friends, is cornerback play. The more Hargreaves does that, the less throws will come his way, which is the ultimate compliment for a defensive back.

That compliment, however, is a long way from being given. After all, a few good plays doesn’t takeaway from the fact that Hargreaves was still a rookie.

The play above was made possible by a few points we referenced earlier. First, the game film teams had of Hargreaves were of him giving up passes like the one above (but with more space). Because of this, attacking him was the game plan. They purposely place Jones on Hargreaves side to get the greatest mismatch and intended to attack it constantly.

The second is that Tampa plays a “bend but don’t break” defense. They played some attacking Cover 3 three against the Rams, but their secondary work and their pass rush was not good enough on either end to be that aggressive. So instead defensive coordinator Mike Smith opted to play for more of a “keep everything in front of you” kind of defense, which is a philosophy of giving up field goals – not touchdowns – and giving up yards – not points.

So when you combine those two things, it makes more sense why Hargreaves gave up all those stats we read about on the previous page. Not that he was designed to get beat, but, again, getting beat is part of what you have to plan for as a defensive back. You just have to be as smart with it as you can.

Above is an example of a place where Hargreaves will always get beat, no matter how polished he becomes.

This was a perfect throw and catch, and after he releases off the line, there isn’t much any defender can do against Jones, but having Hargreaves as an outside corner at the goal line is always going to be a struggle.

There’s a reason Hargreaves’ size was highly debated when he was drafted, and this was why. He was able to play goal line defense on fade routes pretty well at Florida, but the NFL is a different beast. Hargreaves doesn’t like getting super-physical right off the snap, that’s not his game. But if you don’t make receivers uncomfortable off the line when there’s that few yards to go, they’ll win most of the time.

In Week 11 at Kansas City, Hargreaves went back to playing close coverage again, this time against the speedy rookie Tyreek Hill. Hargreaves looked much more conscious of his opponent in Week 11 as opposed to Week 1 and 2, and because of that, you could start to see him anticipate “Alex Smith throws” – throws that were quick.

In the play above, Hargreaves was left on an island against one of the fastest players in the NFL. But instead of playing super far off, he played at a good length off the line of scrimmage knowing that it’s not really in the Chiefs’ DNA to go deep like that, and because of this was able to make a good break on a short pass to deliver a big hit.

But just because Hargreaves was getting better as the year went on didn’t mean he wasn’t still getting picked on. Hargreaves was still the player teams tried to set up with mismatches like the one above, and at times it ended up like that.

No players on the Buccaneers defense would’ve stopped Pro Bowl tight end Travis Kelce on that route, it just happened to be Hargreaves who paid for it in the stat sheet.

In weeks 12 and 13 we saw a much more polished Hargreaves.

I chose to show the play above because it’s the same route he got burned with by Atlanta, Arizona, St. Louis and Denver because of how poorly he played it spacing wise. 

This time, now back in the slot, Hargreaves covered the speedy Doug Baldwin very well on a drag route, making sure he was close enough to him to not warrant a throw.

The following week we saw much of the same, but this time in zone coverage. The Bucs switched it up against the Chargers and started asking their corners and linebackers to play Cover 4 and Cover 6 instead of Cover 2 or Cover 3 (meaning there was zone coverage all around, not just on the back end with the safeties).

Hargreaves showed his increased awareness in this type of coverage, too. As shown in the play above, Hargreaves demonstrated a good drop to cover the first receiver all the way to the edge of his zone, but shuffled the other way at the perfect time to cut off a different receiver, one that quarterback Philip Rovers wanted to go to. A little over half way through the year and Hargreaves was learning that the best defense is one that doesn’t get the ball thrown his way.

In the latter half of the season, however, as an outside corner, even when the ball was thrown his way, if catches were given up, they were often stopped immediately. Once Hargreaves got past his earliest growing pains in the first a part of the season, you started to see the player he was drafted to be; a player that wins with anticipation, quickness, recovery speed and sound tackling. And he recorded his first career interception against Drew Brees. Not a bad guy to pick for that honor.

Unfortunately, after putting together a string of Top 50 and even Top 30 graded performances by the NFL1000 crew, Hargreaves ended the year with his worst grade of the season against Carolina.

Hargreaves was in the slot in the play above against the speedy Ted Ginn, which is a tough task, but Hargreaves made it even tougher with relapses on poor technique. A corner can never give up his back; that’s a cardinal sin of football. This was a mistake I could maybe understand in Week 1 (which happened). It’s not really acceptable in Week 17.

And finally, just to make sure we could still question him going into the offseason, here was that drag route Hargreaves was up against so many times this season, and this was his worst result yet. Simply put, Hargreaves looked helpless on this route. At no point did he have the anticipation or the pursuit angle to come close to Ginn, and the result was a big gain. For as well as Hargreaves performed as an outside corner in the latter half of the season, he severely struggled in his slot role during the final two games.

Hargreaves is never going to be prime time Darrelle Revis or Richard Sherman, and yes, he’s never going to be Jalen Ramsey, either. But the Buccaneers don’t play a style of defense that calls for him to be that.

The Bucs have a “type” when it comes to cornerback, if you haven’t noticed. Grimes, Hargreaves, even Adjei-Barimah and Javion Elliott, they’re all 5-foot-10 guys that win with awareness and recovery speed. None of those guys are “lock down” defenders that are going to play shutdown from press coverage game-in and game-out. They’re not going to win with physicality. They’re going to be able to mirror short routes, play damage control, and wait for their chance to strike.

That is the mold of the player Hargreaves is, and that’s the player he started to come into in 2016. His plate was as full as it could be for a rookie, and he still has a ways to go. But the Bucs drafted him to be hungry enough to take on such a plate – and he will.