Ronald Darby is excited to play man coverage in Ryan Nielsen’s defense

Ronald Darby has made several stops in his winding NFL career, so hitting the free agency market this week was nothing new for the cornerback. When the Jacksonville Jaguars called in hopes that he’d fill a void in their defense, it wasn’t a hard sell.

All Darby had to do was look at Ryan Nielsen’s aggressive defensive scheme and he was ready to sign.

“It fits how I play, how I like to play, too,” Darby said Thursday. “I got a background of playing man, that’s what I came into the league doing, that’s what I did all through college and all through my career. Different places I went to, we ran different schemes and I got better at doing that. My number one thing has always been playing man. I was always a bump and run corner from the Buffalo days, so it wasn’t really that much they had to sell to me.”

Darby, 30, was a standout corner immediately after he was drafted by the Buffalo Bills in the second round of the 2015 NFL draft. PFF recorded Darby in man coverage on 49.9 percent of his coverage snaps as a rookie, but that number dropped to 33.6 in year two as Buffalo leaned more heavily on zone coverage. Eventually, after the Bills hired a new coaching staff, Darby was traded to the Philadelphia Eagles.

Now close to a decade into his NFL career, Darby has seen a lot of defensive scheme and, more often than not, spent the majority of the time in zone. So he’s relishing the possibility that he’ll have to do a little less thinking and a lot more leaning on his instincts in Nielsen’s defense.

“It isn’t too much thinking, it isn’t too much eye work,” Darby said of playing man coverage. “I could run, so like I’m not worried about anybody running by me. As long as your technique is good at the line, you could stop a lot of things. Once you keep practicing it through camp and just keep doing it, you start to get the feel for releases, routes, it all starts to look the same. You’re chest to chest with someone, so it makes the pass even harder to throw and complete.”

Earlier this offseason, Jaguars general manager Trent Baalke called the perception that team was in need of man cornerbacks “blown out of proportion.” Next Gen Stats seems to tell a different story, though.

The Jaguars have hired Ryan Nielsen as their defensive coordinator. Nielsen brings a press-man heavy scheme to Jacksonville.

The Falcons under Nielsen aligned in press coverage against a league-high 53.7% of wide aligned routes in 2023 (Jaguars: 16.2%, 27th).#DUUUVAL pic.twitter.com/WuVpTf5VJ8

— Next Gen Stats (@NextGenStats) January 22, 2024

“When you’re press, you take away the quick game and we like to play shell which when you look at us, we take away the deep throws,” Nielsen said at his introductory press conference in February. “It may look man or man-ish at times, but sometimes there’s press bail and some nuances in the coverage of that’s actually a zone with tighter coverage on the outside.”

One way or another, don’t expect the Jaguars to give opposing receivers much cushion under Nielsen. And that’s just what Darby wants to hear too.