On a recent episode of Blue 58, I mentioned that I wanted to take a deeper look at how three noteworthy Packers defensive backs were used during the 2022 season. Darnell Savage, Adrian Amos, and Rasul Douglas all were interesting parts of the Packers’ secondary last season, and the way they were used played a big role in their overall performance, at least theoretically. I wanted to dig into how they were used a little bit deeper, though, so here’s what I found.

Adrian Amos played basically the same role as his previous seasons in Green Bay

To start, I mentioned on the podcast that Adrian Amos’ decline in 2022 might have had something to do with how he was used, but I have been moved off that opinion after digging into his data more extensively. Amos played basically the same role in 2022 that he did in the Packers’ defense previously, even under Mike Pettine. Amos has always split his time fairly consistently between lining up in the box and deep. It’s a pretty rare sight to see him covering the slot or working as an outside corner.

The numbers show that his 2022 usage wasn’t substantially different than any other year in Green Bay. He lined up in the box for 37.9% of his snaps, the second-highest mark of his career after the 38.2% figure he put up in 2019. He was at free safety for 45.34% of his snaps, too; that’s the second-lowest number of his career. Only in 2019, when he played 43.62% of his snaps there, did he play fewer snaps as a deep safety. This leads me to believe that whatever we saw from Amos in terms of a decline in play was, sadly, due to age and a step backward in athleticism. I still think he’s a capable player, but he may need a smaller role than he played in Green Bay in 2022, and given the Packers’ needs at safety, I don’t think he makes sense for them going forward.

Darnell Savage’s role did change in 2022, and his play may have suffered as a result

Darnell Savage, however, did go through something of a change in 2022 — though perhaps not as much as I’d previously thought. The Packers made a big deal out of moving Savage to the slot in the second half of the 2022 season, so I wondered if his play changed at all as a result, for better or for worse.

As it turns out, not really. According to Pro Football Focus, Savage didn’t post meaningfully better grades when he played more in the slot. Of the 15 games where he played meaningful snaps (tossing out the Eagles game where he played exactly one), the four games where he played the most snaps in the slot were his seventh, eighth, 11th, and 13th best games by coverage grade. He played at least 25 snaps in the slot in all four of those games. But his best five games by coverage grade also included some time in the slot. Those games each featured between 6 and 18 snaps in the slot.

Perhaps more importantly: Darnell Savage just wasn’t very good, as far as coverage goes, in 2022. His very best game by coverage in 2022 earned him a 73.7, barely above average according to PFF.

But maybe there’s another reason for that. The Packers’ schematic change from Mike Pettine’s man-based system to Joe Barry’s zone-based approach appears to have affected Savage in a significant way. He played a career-low 100 snaps in man coverage in 2022, a significant dip from his previous career levels.

In 2019, Savage played 180 snaps in man coverage and allowed eight completions on 11 targets. In 2020, he played 154 man coverage snaps, allowing three completions on eight targets. In 2021, things held pretty steady; Savage played 153 snaps of man coverage, allowing three completions on eight targets. And finally, in 2022, he played just those 100 snaps, allowing eight completions on 15 targets.

Obviously, this isn’t a one-to-one “he played man and was good and then played zone and was bad,” but there might be some trends here. The 2022 Packers do seem to have been much more zone heavy than in the past, even more than they were in 2021, when Savage was still playing quite a bit of man. But in 2022, things changed dramatically, and when he did play man, Savage was much worse. I wonder if that’s a side effect of doing it rarely or being one of the only players on the team doing it. I don’t have enough of a grasp on the film to say for sure, but I think it’s worth pointing out that he’s been playing differently (while also just playing badly).

Rasul Douglas’ slot work offers mixed results

Finally, it doesn’t appear that moving Rasul Douglas around affected his overall results that much.

Douglas definitely played a much different role in 2022 than he did the previous season. In 2022, he played more than 21% of his snaps in the slot after playing a grand total of five snaps there in 2021. In fact, for the first eight weeks of the season, Douglas played inside more than outside. In that span, he played 189 slot snaps versus just 154 as an outside corner. Only Eric Stokes’ injury in Week 9 appears to have made the Packers change course.

However, it’s not quite so simple as to say Douglas played well on the outside and poorly on the inside. He had both good and bad games at both spots. Looking at his best five games of the season, two came in the slot and three came outside. But the exact same thing is true of his worst five games: two came in the slot and three came outside.

Douglas’ performance (perhaps unsurprisingly) was almost entirely matchup based. He had good games against certain players and worse games against certain other players, and that’s really all there is to it.

As far as these things go, I think that’s an encouraging note for Packers fans. Douglas’ performance doesn’t appear to be limited by scheme. As long as the Packers work to find him solid matchups, he should be able to be an asset for the defense wherever he plays. That’s an entirely different kind of usage question, though, and I can’t even begin to answer whether or not Joe Barry is up for that particular task.