To me Richardson and Hyde are sort of opposite in their coverage skills...
Hyde can twist and turn with great stop and start skills and quickness to boot but struggles with pure straight line speed. Like a little supped up car that can handle with the best of them and turn on a dime but doesn't have the huge speed engine.
Richardson on the other hand has the pure straight line speed but he struggles to keep the speed up on turns and start and stopping. Like a drag racer car that's only set up going to go straight and struggles with the curve roads.
Richardson not being able to handle curves nearly as well and his tight hips are always going to hurt him in coverage. But I think he might have more potential as well in different type roles. Such as maybe as a coverage ILB... or maybe a single deep zone FS role... yes I said FS and I know some might think I'm crazy but let me explain.
I think Richardson would struggled with a man to man FS role as I'm sure most of you would as well... but as a single deep Safety in a deep zone roll (which GB hasn't used a lot recently), the FS mainly hang back and wait for the QB to throw it and use their pure speed to get over to the ball or WR and take it out like a missile.... Richardson has the speed and the missile part down already and basically the deep zone FS is like a speed demon LB, which Richardson is.
Of course like I said I haven't seen Capers use much of it lately... as they prefer two Safeties normal depth Safeties... but the Packers have done the single deep Safety role in the past with the Packers.
It was a 2-4 nickel defense... where both OLBers moved up to the DL and Nick Collins moved up to the ILBers making it look like a 4-3 looking set up with 3 CBs and one deep Safety. I think Richardson might be able to play the deep Safety or the Safety that lined up with the LB there.
But again Capers doesn't use the single deep zone FS role a lot... so that's probably off the table from simple not using it enough.
Originally Posted by: beast