He's the best player on the last ranked defense in the NFL.

He sucks!

Of course Dalton is going to key on Green. That said, if you're not going to give a CB credit when they aren't targeted, then you aren't being fair. If Nelson's assignment was open, he would get targets. Clearly, more often than not, he wasn't.

Nelson is what he is.

He's a good man corner who's usually in position but doesn't have good ball awareness.

This is, in particular, a huge issue when he's matched up with WR's who DO have good ball tracking skills.

If Nelson could turn his head and track the ball he'd have a ton of interceptions. He's in good position most of the time he ALLOWS catches.

Sometimes players like that are the most frustrating. Guys with one glaring weakness that holds them back from being significantly better than they are.

Pretty much every team we play targets Nelson from the very first snap. Even when we go to a dime package they still seem to go after him. Tells you all you need to know.

So which half of CP thinks he sucks? I missed that poll.

He's Tom Bradys favorite Chief

Yep. Been saying it since Week 1. The guy needs to turn his head around.

Problem is, when you're playing man as a corner, you can't turn your head to find the football until it's the perfect time. Normally, you aren't going to get a lot of interceptions when you are playing man in the secondary. You're taught not to turn your head to look for the ball.

That's why good man corners are hard to find. They have to have PERFECT timing, otherwise they draw a bunch of PI's because they're hitting too early. Which happens to be the case with Nelson more often than not.

Pretty much.

The good ones don't get many chances because they cover their guy well.

We give up a billion passing yards and everyone thinks our corners suck. They've actually been pretty good. It's our safeties and linebackers that have been the problems

This is somewhat true. The real weak link in the pass defense, even on Sunday night is at safety. I saw them in Cover 2 several times against the Bengals where the safety was slow or took the wrong angle to the boundary. Parker does it WAY too much for a seasoned vet and I saw Lucas do it too.

That being said, our corners, especially Nelson and Fuller, haven't been stellar. For Nelson, it's a matter of limiting penalties, which he did Sunday night. The whole group is making progress.

Scandrick has been a real surprise. Imagine if we still had Amerson. Yikes. Fuller has been disappointing. I wasn't expecting Marcus Peters type play, but he's been fairly mediocre.

Nelson would be helped immensely by better safety play.

He's kinda trapped in the middle of Fuller and Scandrick, IMO. Fuller is a better athlete with more fluid movements and better quickness. He can be a little better out wide than Nelson because he's less likely to get straight up physically beaten. Scandrick, OTOH, is a roughly similar athlete to Nelson but he's a wiley veteran that knows some tricks that Nelson just doesn't. He's more aware and he's more cagey. He plays a little closer to the edge but it also makes him generally more effective, IMO.

Nelson is neither a superlative athlete nor is he a particularly intuitive cover guy. He's someone that can hang with WRs for a few steps because he's not a complete oaf out there, but if he's asked to hang for 2 seconds or more, he's probably beat. Your best hope with him is that he can mirror the first move because it's going to go downhill quickly from there given his relatively pedestrian athleticism. So he needs those safeties helping him out and to this point in the season they haven't been all that often.

Nelson's a JAG. If he's starting for you, you should be looking to upgrade. If he's your Nickel - you're probably okay there. He's been better than he was last year but maybe not quite as good as he was in the slot 2 years ago. Personally, I have no interest in paying him because adequate slot corners with physical limitations shouldn't be that hard to draft and develop.

But for the rest of the year, if the safeties get healthy (and Lucas continues to play well), you can cover for him. He's...okay. I'd say that Scandrick has clearly been better than him to this point and Fuller has more potential (and also looked decent on Sunday, IMO), but Nelson's a fine complementary defensive back who's worth having around until he costs real money.

I know he had a pick 6 on Sunday, but my god how awful of angles does Parker take? Like 3 times he takes a bad angle that gives up 20 plus extra yards.

Jesus.