Hang on, Captain. He's 5'10 5/8ths, which means he's only 3/8ths of an inch under the NFL average of 5'11. He also ran a 4.4 at 200 pounds. What's wrong with that?
The common wisdom is that the team needs to have tall DBs (+/- 6'1") to defend against tall WRs.
Here's the thing.
1) For me, a DB's #1 job is to cover well enough prevent a pass from being thrown his way (or, at least, make the QB hesitant to do so). A DB's ability to do that is independent of his height. IOW, height alone doesn't guarantee that a DB can cover a tall WR effectively or even guarantee that he can win the battle at the catch point against taller WRs.
2) While there are "a lot" of taller WRs in the league, few of them are consistently "uncoverable" by a shorter DB - they're not all "Gronk". And not all of those taller WRs (perhaps even very few of them) can consistently win the battle at the catch point against even "shorter" DBs.
3) The Pats defend against just under 600 pass attempts each season. What percentage of those are actually thrown to tall WRs (who are actually good)?
4) Although it appears that there are more tall DBs
who can actually cover available nowadays than there were 10 years ago (or even 5 years ago), they're still relatively rare and still difficult for the Pats to get to in the draft. IOW, there's still quite a bit of luck (and expense) involved in acquiring one (and it's not as if BB hasn't tried).
And yet some are still critical of BB for acquiring the best coverage DB's available to him, regardless of height, because these "short guys"
may not be able to win what likely amounts to a very small percentage of plays, even though their coverage skills may actually be
preventing a lot of those plays from happening in the first place.
