Arizona Cardinals: Is Justin Bethel a Liability on Defense?
By David Mamola
The Arizona Cardinals have a big challenge ahead of them this Sunday at Carolina. Is there an issue in the team’s secondary that could prevent a trip to Super Bowl 50?
Fourth-year Arizona Cardinals cornerback Justin Bethel is a star special teams player and is going to his second consecutive Pro Bowl this season for his work on the team’s third phase.
He has played cornerback before and with mixed results but coming into this season he was being relied on as Arizona’s third or fourth cornerback at best. However, when Pro Bowl defensive back Tyrann Mathieu was lost for the year with a torn ACL in Week 15, Bethel was pressed into a starting role.
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Mathieu was a jack-of-all-trades, defending receivers both outside the numbers and in the slot. According to Pro Football Focus, the Cardinals’ safety was actually rated as the NFL’s top cornerback this season and by a wide margin. The versatile performer finished third on the team with 89 tackles, tied for the team lead with five interceptions and led the Cardinals with 17 passes defensed.
Obviously Bethel had big shoes to fill, but the Cardinals hoped that his mistakes would be minimized with him getting help from the safeties and linebackers in coverage. However, over the past few games, Bethel has been more of a liability than an asset as teams are consistently staying away from All-Pro cornerback Patrick Peterson and targeting Bethel – a lot.
Last week against the Green Bay Packers, quarterback Aaron Rodgers attacked Bethel constantly, and in turn, the Arizona defender helped make relatively unknown wide receivers Jeff Janis and Jared Abbrederis look like Pro Bowlers.
The former totaled seven catches for 145 yards and a pair of touchdowns, including a 41-yard “Hail Mary” pass on the final play of regulation. Abbrederis hauled in four passes for 55 yards but was targeted 12 times in the game.
The Cardinals really have no other choice but to play him, but there are a few things they could do to help him out. First, playing more zone would be beneficial to Bethel. In man-to-man coverage (something Arizona plays a lot because they blitz so frequently), Bethel is on an island of sorts and any mistake he makes is magnified. Of course, his errors playing zone defense would be costly too, but hopefully the Cardinals’ speed on defense can compensate for that.
Furthermore, the Cardinals could let him play more press-coverage, using his size (6’0”, 190 pounds) to jam wide receivers at the line of scrimmage to try to disrupt their timing, and then using his speed to recover if he gets beat. A little more support from the pass rush would help. Arizona totaled a modest 36 sacks in 16 regular-season contests (9 of those in the Week 16 win over Green Bay) and on Saturday night dropped Rodgers just once.
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Luckily for Bethel and the Cardinals, the Panthers don’t have a Pro Bowl-type receiver for them to concern themselves with (although they do have to worry about star tight end Greg Olsen and speedy Ten Ginn, who totaled 10 touchdown receptions this season).
Regardless, Bethel needs to play better on Sunday in Charlotte if the Cardinals want to slow-down the league’s number-one scoring team (31.3 points per game) and find a way to upset the Carolina Panthers.