Particularly with his injury making it hard for him to break down and cut laterally, Jaylon was a bad fit for MLB. But let him drive and cut off the edge, and he made plays even injured. Shutting down the edge is what he's best at, injured or not. And we put him at MLB.
He makes so much more sense at SAM, where he protects the edge and occasionally blitzes. The move to SAM made sense even before we got LVE.
I like it *generally* from a personnel perspective. Having the guy on the edge be the disposable cheapo player left the other guy having to go from MLB to a nickel cover LB, two roles that require different player characteristics. Edge players match to the speed, agility, and smaller sizes of a nickel cover LB. You want size and stopping power at MLB. Much more natural to have the MLB be a run stuffing specialist, and take him off the field in nickel situations. Stout tackling machines are easy to find and not really sought after because of their limitations in coverage. But let them only play in the base, with LBs who *can* cover on either side of them, and you're covered for your coverage needs while you get great run defense. We should have always been doing it that way if were going to cheap out on one LB spot.
I'm not sure who will play nickel now, because I'm not sure if Jaylon is fully recovered yet, or ever will be. And LVE is supposed to be very good in coverage himself, so he's real competition for play time in nickel.
But Jaylon was supposed to have elite coverage skills for a LB of his size, particularly in man coverage. If healthy enough, he'll certainly be in nickel when they want man coverage, even if there still might be competition in zone. They're all good.
