He rarely got outumped for the ball mainly because he wasn\'t close enough to the receiver to jump for the ball. In most cases he was deked by the receiver or was coming up from behind and getting flagged for pass interference, even if it wasn\'t a good call. Perception is reality.
Hobbs can not stick with receivers. His one on one coverage is horrible. I am sure that almost everyone recognizes that. What he does have is the capability of recovering via his speed but by then in most cases it is too late or the flag flies.
My guess is that the Pats finally have seen that or they would not be going so heavy into the Cb position in free agency and in the draft. With more to come too, perhaps Law or Shepherd, and the rumor of them moving Merriweather up to corner.
All of this talk and action from them with corners should be a hint.
No offense but reading a post like this tells me you don't understand our defense very well at all. We are predominantly a soft zone cover 3 team. Usually, we rolled the safeties away from Ellis towards Asante so that he could have the freedom to jump the short routes. Other times we dropped Asante and brought Rodney down low into the box. More often than not, however, Hobbs had deep responsibility and had to give up the short route, with a LB or safety filling the flats or even giving up that zone entirely. All those short completions underneath Ellis were due to coverage called. They were able to do this because Hobbs was quick enough to recover and limit that short pass to a mediocre gain. Hobbs is not a star, but he is definitely a starting corner in this league. He did a great job against a lot of very good WR's this year and he's still getting better.