Griffin covering ground for Titans in secondary

August, 13, 2008
Aug 13
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By Paul Kuharsky

Posted by ESPN.com's Paul Kuharsky

 
 G. Newman Lowrance/Getty Images
 Defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz said Michael Griffin gives the Titans "a dimension that we haven't had for a long time."

Michael Griffin has been very solid in camp so far, giving the Titans reason to think their secondary will be better in its second year with the current base personnel. He and strong safety Chris Hope are developing communication and trust that will be crucial to the Titans' secondary play.

The big issue for Griffin now is trusting what he sees and resisting the urge to second-guess himself, he said.

What's stood out to defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz is just how much ground Griffin can cover.

Schwartz said it was a slow start but steady progress for Griffin.

"He'd been playing extremely well on special teams and then didn't play real well right away [last year]," Schwartz said. "What happened was, he got better. Every week he got better. By the end of the season he was really a good player for us."

"Then he started off the offseason slow because he was still in college finishing up [in Austin, Texas] and then he came back in and really never missed a beat. He has had great range, he has made some unbelievable plays with range and it gives us a dimension that we haven't had for a long time -- that corner speed back there and he can really overlap and make a lot of plays back there."

I thought it was bizarre that the Titans played Griffin at corner after they drafted him last year. It was an overreaction in the wake of the Adam Jones suspension, especially when the team had a glaring hole at the very free safety spot Griffin was so well-suited to play.

But the team still goes out of its way to mention how Griffin's time at corner prepared him for his job now. I tend to think that a preseason and six more games at free safety would have actually better prepared him for playing free safety.

Griffin took over that spot from Calvin Lowry for the seventh game last year and is entrenched there now, looking good.

As a rookie he confessed to being a bit confused by the shuffle, but now he agrees that the corner experience helped him.

"The plays we run right now are still the plays we ran last year and I think just understanding what the corner sees helps me out as a safety to know what the weakness of the coverage is and what the strength of the coverage is," Griffin said. "It allows me to help out those weaknesses in coverage."

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