How Cardinals' Coaches are Negating Budda Baker's Strengths

By Walter Mitchell

Budda's conundrum in Jonathan Gannon's defense is that it places primary emphasis on caution and cushion. Gannon is always preaching to his players, "whatever you do, don't let the ball go over your head." What this has effectively done is negate Budda's greatest skill from the high safety position --- which is storming down the alley to take down RBs, TEs and WRs THE SPLIT SECOND BEFORE they have the time to make a move.

Honestly, I have never seen a Cardinal storm the alley the brilliant way that Budda does. However, in Gannon's defense, his high safeties are instructed to play with added cushion so as to prioritize the pass first. Thus, for Budda, the alleys have been lengthened and his first step, per instruction, is backward.

When a safety is a step or two late storming the alley the ball carrier has time to plant and juke. This increases the odds for a missed tackle significantly, because when a free safety storms the alley, the whole point is to run right through the ball carrier before he has time to react.

The only place where Budda belongs in Gannon's offense is at strong safety where he can play close to the box to (1) run blitz; (2) pass blitz; (3) cover short to intermediate routes; (4) spy the QB.

Absolute Proof of Where Budda Belongs:

The absolute proof of this came last season during the Cardinals' shocking 41-10 win over the Rams at home in Week 2. If you think back to that game, Budda's run blitzes that resulted in TFLs on Kyren Williams forced Sean McVay to think twice about running his vaunted off-tackle power plays. 7 of his 8 tackles in the game were stops that led to stalled drives and punts. On third down passing plays, he would double with underneath leverage on Cooper Kupp and on one key out-pass 3rd down conversion attempt from Stafford to Kupp, Budda got the PBU that once again forced the Rams to punt.

Getting the Rams' outstanding offense off the field so often in that first half is the main reasons why the Cardinals had a 24-3 halftime lead.

I have never seen one player do more to take away Sean McVay's strengths as a play caller than what Budda Baker did in that game. The tone that Budda set for TFLs was so contagious that it sparked a season high 12 TFLs and 5 sacks --- that relegated the Rams to 10 points.

Check out the first few plays of this video: this is Budda playing where he belongs:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Budda+Baker+tackles

Where Budda Does Not Belong Philosophically:

Fast forward to the Cardinals' home game versus the Rams this season and because neither Rabbit Tyalor-Demerson or Kitan Crawford were active, Budda was assigned to play deep safety. And to repeat, because Budda's first priority was cushion, he couldn't get to the RBs before they could make a move. Plus, as we all know, Budda has never been a rangy, instinctive or effective cover safety on the third level. That's just not the strength of his game. Go back to his University of Washington tapes --- Jimmy Lake relished playing Budda closer to the ball.

With regard to this year's home game versus the Rams, Budda's stats playing deep versus the Rams were 6 total tackles, 3 solo, 0 TFL, 0 sacks, 0 PBUs --- and get this, the entire defense had 0 TFL, 0 sacks only 2 PBUs in what was an embarrassing 45-17 loss.

As Al Michaels and Troy Aikman like to say:

"As Budda goes, so goes the Cardinals' defense."

A Collective Phew from McVay and Stafford:

No two people were more delighted to see Budda Baker playing FS than Sean McVay and Matthew Stafford. One can imagine they had spent most of the week practicing in the "where's Budda?" mode that all three rivals in the NFC West have been practicing for years. Just ask George Kittle. Budda has been living in his mind the last nine years rent free.

Where was Budda versus the Rams this year?

Right where the Rams' wanted him.

Budda Baker's Game Grades vs Rams at Home:

* 2024 at box safety: 78.6

* 2025 at deep safety: 29.6

Note: in the 2024 game the one defensive player who graded higher than Budda was Dennis Gardeck at 91.2 who had 4 QB pressures and 3 sacks. How or why this GM and these coaches ever let Dennis Gardeck leave the building is yet another quandary for perhaps a later discussion.