During the Miami Dolphins’ stretch of organized team activities (OTAs) and offseason workouts, there were whispers about what exactly the Miami Dolphins intend to do with defensive back Minkah Fitzpatrick. Was he set to move to Free Safety? Was he going to play outside corner? It seems as though his best fit is as a nickel defensive back — he can play man to man in the slot but also station himself off the edge to play run support or blitz with the most deception there.
There’s just one problem — cornerback Bobby McCain is pretty darn good in the nickel too, go back and watch his 2017 season when he was tasked with playing inside and it doesn’t take long to see he’s much better suited there than outside.
So what is the solution? You can’t have two primary nickel defenders and things get very messy when you force one of them to the outside. Minkah has the skills to play there, but isolating him in coverage diminishes so much of the versatility that the Dolphins are hoping to weaponize with Fitzpatrick.
We may have our answer, if the latest breadcrumbs are any indication. Omar Kelly of the Sun Sentinel dropped this nugget on Twitter this past week as far as the Dolphins plans for Minkah and Bobby.
This is a pretty interesting development for the back-end. McCain has good speed and his range could make sense in a free safety role. What’s even more important is what the Dolphins base personnel can look like if the team ultimately trades Reshad Jones before the start of the season — Miami can play McCain and Fitzpatrick as the team’s free and strong safeties simultaneously. And when Miami needs to get into sub-packages, they can bring T.J. McDonald on the field and roll either McCain or Fitzpatrick down into the slot on any given rep to keep opposing offenses guessing.
This will be a situation to monitor closely in July when the team kicks off training camp.
