Head coach Sean McDermott earned his stripes in the NFL on the defensive side of the ball. As a defensive coordinator in Carolina, he had some of the most athletic linebackers in the league in Luke Kuechly, Thomas Davis and Shaq Thompson. This was always the strength of his defenses, so he needed to create a way to keep them on the field as much as possible. So McDermott chose to stay in base defense with three linebackers far more often than the NFL average. The package was often referred to as ‘big nickel’. So, instead of substituting Thompson out and a cornerback in, he would keep Thompson in. That put a tremendous amount of responsibility on Thompson because he would have to be well-versed in nickel corner techniques and coverages. There aren’t any statistics sites that track defensive personnel for our consumption, but the closest data that I could track down was courtesy of Sports Info Solutions (SIS). According to SIS, in 2016, McDermott’s final season as defensive coordinator of the Panthers, they utilized their ‘big nickel’ or base defense 6.3% of the time in situations where the offense faced 3rd and 4+ yards. The league average that season…