You don't know what the role was gonig to look like when the season started. Just because he was exclusively working out at LB doesn't mean he was going to be there every down , just that regardless of the down he has to be ready for anything.
I assumed that Tanks role was going to be similar to what Rodney was doing last year not in some exotic new role created specifically for him (but if that is what you thought please elaborate as we all enjoy your football breakdowns). And I don't think some training camp practices meant that Tank was all the sudden being turned into a 3 down LBer. To guess what the role was going to be and say that it was going to be more than Rodney last year is just speculation.
Its all speculation. People are saying 'who will take Tanks' 'hybrid lb/s role'.
Fact is his role is backup safety.
We traditionally use S as 'lbs' in the nickel/dime package. That isnt really 'a role' for someone to take. Tank wasn't taking over for Rodney either.
It would appear that BB feels (I believe this very strongly, and his use of Tank in camp seems to concur) that the weakness on this team the last 2 years has been coverage in passing only situations. And the problems have been at LB,S and nickel, pretty much equally as often. We overhauled the nickel spot. Meriweather seems to help the safety coverage issue. Tank Williams was never going to improve coverage at the safety spot.
One way that we have used is to use safeties at the LB spot, essentially removing ANOTHER LB and putting a s on the field, but playing him the LB spot.
Where Tank was different is that BB had him playing ILB in the base defense in camp. Never, ever has he done that with a safety.
The logic, it would seem to me, is that BB intended to use Tank to expand the situations where he would replace a LB with a S, for example staying in the 34 on 2nd and 10, and replacing an ilb with Tank to get better coverage at the expense of run D.
I don't and never did expect Rodneys role to be impacted at all by Tank Williams, with the possible exception that in the sub packages Rodney would have played S rather than a LB-type position.
Rodney is EXCELLENT as a nickel LB, and a fantastic blitzer. He has very good "LB cover skills". I would like to see him as little as possible playing straight safety in sub packages, though, because he is a liability.
In other words, in order to improve coverage, we play Safeties in a LB position. Up until now that has been limited to sub packages, and Harrison is the guy we like to use in that role. It appeared during camp that we were going to use that tactic in more than just sub packages, and Tank Williams was being prepped for it, or at least BB was trying to figure out if he could do it. Without Tank Williams nothing has changed, other than the fact, his skillset had created some new ideas that BB was at least considering using him in.
