How Ryan Clark will help improve the Redskins secondary

The Washington Redskins defense was one of the worst in 2013. One reason why is their horrendous play at the safety positions, where Reed Doughty, Bacarri Rambo and Brandon Meriweather helped the defense give up 58 plays of 20 or more yards, tied for eighth worst in the NFL. All struggled to take proper angles to receivers, were late on their last-second rotations and flat-out blew assignments.

Going into 2014, all but Doughty are back. Meriweather is expected to start at strong safety, while new acquisition Ryan Clark will start at free safety.

Clark is expected to fix the woes in the deep middle of the field. He has experience as a single-high safety in a movement and pressure oriented defense like the Redskins’, having played the last eight seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He’s an above-average safety who is smart and technically sound, but who has also slowed with age.

He’s 34 now and doesn’t have the range to get over the top of outside breaking routes at the last second.

Against the New England Patriots last season, Clark was standing flat-footed in deep zonal coverage when the Patriots’ tight end ran a vertical route down the left hash. Clark knew what was coming: The tight end would have to either keep running downfield or break outside for a corner route. Those were the only two options, and it was likely the latter because the outside breaking receiver was already running vertically.

The tight end stabbed his left foot into the grass and turned outside. Clark followed him, already committing to covering the route before the quarterback raised his shoulder to throw. This was textbook safety coverage. But it didn’t matter; Clark could not run fast enough. He couldn’t hover over the top of the route. He didn’t have the speed to.

The tight end extended his arms to catch a 34-yard throw.

Speed isn’t always an indicator of quality. Meriweather, the team’s starting strong safety, runs fast (4.47 40-yard dash), but he doesn’t play smart. He takes very poor angles and is generally undisciplined. This makes him a below-average safety.

Conversely, Clark lacks speed but is still above-average because he reads quarterbacks and receivers to take him to the ball.

In the same game against the Patriots, Clark stood in single-high coverage as he faced two verticals off of play action. A post route was to his right and a crossing route to his left. The concept was drawn up to fool him into either running vertically or downhill, leaving one open for a big play.

Clark remained in between the hashes and the two routes. He didn’t initially commit one way or another, instead waiting for the crosser to cut into the middle of the field.

When the crosser cut, Clark took an outside angle and cut across the field too. If the ball was thrown to the crosser, he would have likely intercepted it. And if it was thrown to the post route, it wouldn’t be a problem because Clark smartly passed off that responsibility to the two cornerbacks.

This is what the Redskins needed last season. They couldn’t rely on any of their safeties to simply stay disciplined throughout on a single play, let alone a whole game. They took awful angles against seam routes and were constantly out of position. They helped allow the sixth-worst quarterback rating (96.1), the second-worst points per game (29.9), the second-worst yard per throw average (8.0) and the worst first down percentage (39.7), according to NFL.com.

Clark won’t fix all of the problems, but he’ll help improve the defense. He’s a veteran and understands how to defend the different concepts offenses use.

When he was faced with vertical and crossing routes against the Cincinnati Bengals last season, he did an admirable job covering them.

He backpedaled then shuffled deep in the middle of the field, covering over the top of the vertical route to deter the quarterback from throwing it and then ran outside the numbers to defend the throw to the crosser. It went high and over the crosser, falling incomplete as Clark launched his body forward and pulled up at the last-second to avoid a penalty.

The Redskins hope that Clark’s coverage will force more quarterbacks to hold the ball longer when going through their reads, so the pass-rush can get to them before a throw is made. It’s why they signed him to bolster their struggling secondary.