Is Damarious Randall Lucky or Good?

This question came to us via a reader on Facebook by the name of Alex. He wanted us to discuss whether Damarious Randall is lucky or good. A few weeks ago, we spent an entire episode talking about whether Damarious Randall was a bust. Well, since then he’s had an interception in every game that he’s played. Let's consider the evidence for lucky or good based just on these three interceptions.

So that first pick, the pass deflects off the receiver’s hands, goes over his shoulder, and lands right in Randall’s lap. He’s off to the races to the end zone and scores a touchdown.

This is a pretty good play, but it is also pretty fortunate that he happened to be right there to make the play. I’m going to say that this one was as much luck as being good.  

The second interception was a tipped ball, this time by Blake Martinez. If you watch the film of the play, Damarious Randall has to literally take just two steps forward to catch this ball and it’s another interception.

The thing is, a better throw on that play is probably a touchdown. Martinez made a tremendous play to tip this ball, but if you take the time and look at the coaches film of this play, given the position of the defense, they may score a touchdown with a better throw.

If not for Blake Martinez making a great play, there is no Randall interception and there’s probably a lot of bad things happening.

The third interception, this past week against the Saints, was easily the best play of these three. Randall has good coverage and I'm not sure what Drew Brees is thinking when he throws this ball, because Damarious Randall is absolutely in the receiver's hip pocket at the time of the throw.

He turns around, the ball is right there, he catches it, and it’s a great interception. A fantastic play by Randall. This one is indisputably a good play.

So is Randall lucky or good? Two of these three plays I would say he’s lucky, but the real question to me is whether or not that’s actually a bad thing. You can't dispute that Randall has been in a situation these past few weeks where he’s pretty much been a week-to-week player. He had a serious low point against the Chicago Bears, and he’s had to figure it out from there. He's come up with some big plays in that stretch. Interceptions are huge. You can’t really overstate the importance of stopping the opposing offense and taking points off the board, almost literally in the case of that Brees interception. In one situation, he put points on the board for the Packers by taking that interception back for touchdown.

On top of that you’ve got to be in the right spot to be lucky. It seemed like in all three of these play,s Randall was doing his job when he got lucky. That can't be overlooked. You’ve got to be doing your job a lot of times to get lucky. IN fact, a lot of what’s perceived to be lucky is just a guy doing his job really well and then something happens to him.

I don't know if Randall is doing any better overall, but he certainly made some really nice plays. He might be lucky, but it’s turning out to be pretty good for the Packers.

This post is an adapted transcript from the most recent episode of Blue 58, which you can listen to below. Don't forget to subscribe on iTunes!