INDIANAPOLIS — College football’s best defensive back the last two years was Minkah Fitzpatrick. But it’s hard to get any more specific than calling him a “defensive back.”
Minkah Fitzpatrick could play anywhere. Will an NFL team draft him at nickel corner?
Slot corners aren’t usually high picks, but the time is right.
Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
Fitzpatrick played for the sport’s foremost DBs coach, Nick Saban, and Saban moved him around the secondary with abandon. Alabama’s depth chart called Fitzpatrick a strong safety, but he defies positional labeling. Fitzpatrick lined up more often as a slot cornerback than a safety, and he made brief appearances (13 snaps in 2017) as an outside corner.
Over time, Fitzpatrick has trended toward one position: nickel cornerback.
Except for quarterbacks, if you ask a player at the NFL Combine which position he’s best at, he’ll tell you that he’s versatile and will play wherever a team wants him. Fitzpatrick does the same, but there are enough hints that he’s most comfortable at nickel corner.
I asked Ronnie Harrison, who played safety in Tuscaloosa alongside Fitzpatrick for their three years, if Fitzpatrick stood out particularly at one position.
“Yeah, definitely,” Harrison said. “In the slot, playing nickel, I think he was the best I’ve seen do it, for the most part. That’s pretty much his natural position.”
Former Bama corner Anthony Averett said the same.
“I think he’s a great blitzer, and he can play in that slot position very well,” Averett said. “I feel like he fits there perfect to me.”
Levi Wallace, another Bama corner, liked Fitzpatrick more at safety. Selfishly.
“I like having him over my back,” Wallace said.
As his career wore on, Alabama started to use Fitzpatrick more as a nickelback than at safety, his listed spot. He was either a nickel or a linebacker on almost every snap in Bama’s National Championship win against Georgia. Here’s a supercut from that game that features 31 Fitzpatrick snaps as a nickel/backer, one as a deep safety, and none as an outside corner. It’s a role that Fitzpatrick seems extra comfortable playing.
“I came in as a corner, so I’m used to just covering people, playing man to man wherever it was. Like halfway through camp, Coach Saban just came to me asking if I wanted to play slot corner, learn how to play it. And I said, ‘Sure,’ so I kind of just took on that role,” he said.
That was in camp Fitzpatrick’s freshman year, 2015. He started to work there some in practice, while he mostly played a true safety role as a freshman. He worked in more game snaps at both outside and inside corner as a sophomore, then settled in as a nickel in 2017.
“It’s a different type of position,” Fitzpatrick told SB Nation at the NFL Combine. “It’s kind of a combination between corner and safety. You can make calls like a safety. You can make calls like a safety. You can rush, you can fill the holes and the gaps like a safety. But then you can cover man to man on pass downs when you need to, just like a corner. So I like playing both corner and safety, so I think slot corner’s just the optimal position.”
Now, the question: Will a team draft Fitzpatrick to play nickel corner?
At pretty much any time in the past, the answer would’ve been a resounding “no.” Nickel corners were considered backups, while NFL teams spent most of their time in base defenses with seven linemen and linebackers, two safeties, and two corners.
Those days are gone. NFL teams now consider nickelbacks to be starters. College offenses have been fanning out in spread schemes for years, and the NFL has come to follow suit. The Eagles won the Super Bowl with their primary nickel corner, Patrick Robinson, playing 69 percent of their defensive snaps. According to the counts at Pro Football Reference, 21 of the league’s 32 teams had three different corners play more than 50 percent of the time.
Fitzpatrick’s versatility would’ve meant, at another time, that a team spending a top-10 pick on him would’ve done it with the intention of moving him outside or to safety. If his new team decides to use him primarily* inside, he’ll likely be the highest-picked nickelback ever.
At Alabama, Saban’s come to use at least three corners on almost every snap.
“[The nickelback] has to be a much more complete player,” Saban said, noting that he is a hybrid mix of a Sam linebacker and a fleet-footed defensive back. “That’s why the position is named Star. So it has changed quite dramatically in the last 10 or 15 years.”
In Fitzpatrick’s sophomore season, Alabama lost the national title game to Clemson because the Tide’s slot corner, former five-star Tony Brown, got picked and couldn’t stay with 5’10 Clemson slot receiver Hunter Renfrow at the goal line. Saban’s never said if it was a coincidence or not that Fitzpatrick started playing more nickel in the season that followed.
Whatever his primary position is, Fitzpatrick probably won’t just play there.
Nickel cornerbacks aren’t on the field every play. But Fitzpatrick is not the kind of player you draft to put on the bench for even several snaps a game. Whether he lands predominantly at nickelback or not, he’s going to take snaps at other positions.
“I can show people that I have the hips and feet for corner, and I also have the IQ and the tackling ability of the safety, and I think that’s real important to show coaches when I’m out there doing my drills,” he said at the combine. “I think just going into the draft, just giving me a little bit of up. They know I can play multiple positions at a high level.”
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