Slot receivers come in all shapes and sizes. The position may lean toward smaller guys with speed, but teams will move their bigger receivers into the slot to exploit matchups. Slot corners must be ready to go against both the small, twitchy athletes as well as the big, physical ones. They present much different challenges.
The Pittsburgh Steelers have primarily been using undrafted rookie CB Beanie Bishop Jr. in the slot over the first half of training camp. He measured in at his West Virginia pro day at 5091, 180 pounds. Undersized speedster Calvin Austin III has been his most frequent matchup, but he has gotten some reps against George Pickens and others who challenge him in other ways.
Prospect Media interviewed Bishop after Friday’s practice at Latrobe Memorial Stadium and asked him how he approaches covering bigger receivers who have a clear size advantage on him.
“I would just say have your eyes in the right spot and really, you gotta have the right mentality, man. If you don’t have the mentality, you won’t go far. Because you gotta think, you undersized, you smaller and things like that. And you gotta be ready to attack them boys,” Bishop said in a video posted on Prospect Media’s YouTube. “Just because they big, don’t mean that they got the right mentality that they going to try to overpower you.
“Some guys be like, ‘Okay boom, he’s small. I’m just going to bully him.’ No, you gotta play bully ball as a little guy. You gotta be angry and mean, bro….You gotta be able to tackle.”
This is exactly the mentality that I am sure Mike Tomlin and the secondary coaches have been preaching to him since he arrived at rookie minicamp in the spring. Tomlin appeared on NFL Network after Saturday’s practice and he described what he looks for in different types of players.
“If you got big guys who can run and little guys that can hit, you’ll have a good football team,” Tomlin said.
He has also previously said that dominant nickel corners are all “angry little people.”
Bishop clearly falls into the little guys category, and he seems to have the right angry little guy demeanor that Tomlin was describing.
Those reps against Pickens were due to DB coach Grady Brown specifically calling for Bishop to cover him. After Bishop won the first rep on a bit of an off-target throw, Tomlin challenged them for a rematch. Pickens caught the ball, but Bishop forced him out of bounds. Pickens is both big and fast, which is a unique challenge, but Bishop held up well.
Alex Kozora also noted in his training camp diary on Saturday that Bishop matched up against TE Matt Sokol on one rep. Sokol is 6-5, 253 pounds. That is a huge mismatch, but Bishop won the rep.
Beanie Bishop Jr. has been working his way into the conversation for the starting nickel role until Cam Sutton returns from suspension. There was a lot of buzz about Bishop before training camp started, but he has even surpassed those lofty expectations as an undrafted rookie so far.
