I’ve been wondering what Nick Perry will bring to the Packer defense in his sophomore season. Technically speaking, he isn’t a rookie any more. However, he spent most of last season on the sidelines, so he certainly doesn’t have the experience most rookies have of at least taking part in practice.
Still, Perry has had a year to absorb the defensive play book and study film and that alone should make him a better player out of the gates.
Let’s take a look at some clips of Nick from last season. Despite his short tenure on the field, there are some interesting things happening here.
Welcome to the NFL Nick Perry
Nick’s first game against the 49ers left a lot to be desired. Here he is getting pancaked on the first defensive play of the 2012 season…
He didn’t get pancaked again after that first play, but he still struggled in his first outing. He had difficulty maintaining outside leverage…
As the game against the Niners wore on Perry appeared to find his rhythm to some degree. In this clip, he gets around the right tackle on a nice speed rush. He doesn’t quite get to the QB before the ball is released, but at least he’s making progress.
Nick’s Struggles Continue
Nick continued getting stuck inside against the Bears…
Perry was soon replaced by Erik Walden and shared time with Walden from then on.
Game Three
Game three against the Seahawks, things started to get interesting. This clip shows Perry handling contain much better. Granted, he’s posted much wider in this formation but he does a good job of standing his blocker up, maintaining contain, and then shedding his blocker to get in on the tackle.
Against the Seahawks Perry also displayed his strength. Watch as he bull rushes on this play. At some point he needed to stop to contain Wilson as he bounced around the outside, but the bull rush was nice.
Pass Coverage
Nick has a bit of work to do if he’s going to avoid getting burned in pass coverage. In the first clip here he’s beaten badly. Admittedly, it’s against Crabtree, but a big guy like Nick should be able to check Crabtree so far off his route that he’s wandering through the linemen in the backfield. In the second clip, Nick just bites so hard on the run that he can’t recover as the TE releases into the flat.
The Nick Perry I Expect to See in 2013
With all that said, I still have a ton of confidence in Perry going into this season. For starters, whether he was on the field much or not last season, he’s no longer a rookie. He’s studied the playbook and watched the mistakes others have made from the sidelines.
Plus, let’s not forget that not only was Perry a rookie last season, he was undergoing a conversion to outside linebacker. He’s now another year into that conversion.
The truth is… this is the Nick Perry I expect to see more of this coming season…
If Perry took advantage of the time he was off the field watching, it could have immense value. What I see in these vids is a guy who has the physicals but was not yet ready to play sound fundamentals at his position. We cannot underestimate the power of mental reps…if Perry was taking them while on the sideline…he will be a beast this year, mark my words. If he was not taking mental reps he will be nothing more than “a bit growed up” from last season.
I agree. I think he will be great. I actually think we should move him to ILB. He would provide bruising punishment to RB and could become a very disruptive blitzer from the second level.What’s up with them playing Neal at OLB?! I think he should be interior D-line or also ILB. It makes no sense to put a huge beast like Neal at OLB to me. I’m sure Capers has something up his sleeve;)
Twitter: GPN_JR
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I think you’re right Jon. Capers has something up his sleeve. If nothing else, it would give offenses the illusion of another lineman when, in fact, he may be playing the role of a linebacker. Sort of a Capers cloaking device.