Saw this on “X” after the loss:

What’s unfortunate is that Seth is right in this case, even if he says Deebo “Samuels” like a WIP caller. He says the Eagles corners “want no parts whatsoever, they want to push a guy out of bounds, or they want to trip him up, but they will not come up and put their body on someone and tackle him, the only guy in that secondary who will hit you is Reed Blankenship.”

Fact check – true. The corners have little interest in hitting. Anybody with a working set of eyeballs knows this. They will tackle when they have to, i.e. it’s 1v1 in coverage and they’re on top of a guy and can drag down someone who is their same size. But watch when a player (like Deebo Samuel) reaches the next level and gets past the defensive front. If the linebackers are chasing him down, Slay will wait until the last minute to see if he’s required to join in the tackling. Otherwise, he will make a business decision and try to avoid the contact. Bradberry is mostly the same. Blankenship, meantime, will advance, meet the ball carrier, and try to lay the wood.

Now, to be fair, Slay and Bradberry aren’t the first NFL corners to play more of a finesse game than a brute force game. We all watched Asante Samuel “tackle” during his time in Philadelphia. And we’d be naive to think that NFL cornerbacks are regularly clobbering opposing players. They usually do the least amount of hitting over the course of a game, because they’re paid for their coverage skills.

The particular problem here is that the Eagles’ linebackers aren’t very good, and if you meet San Fran again in the playoffs, you’re gonna see Deebo “Samuels” and Christian McCaffrey in open space. The corners are gonna have to chip in and do their part, and that includes Eli Ricks or whomever is in the slot. If they don’t help out, they’re gonna get murdered again in yards after contact and/or yards after the catch, just like they did on Sunday night.


So no, NFL corners aren’t expected to drop the hammer with frequency, but it’s going to be a point of emphasis if they run up against the Niners again.

EDIT – throwing this in here: