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After the Ravens released safety Ken Hamlin on Wednesday, I got a question sent to my Twitter account (if you're not already following me, get on it) asking whether any of the team's cornerbacks could double as a safety considering there are only three safeties currently on the roster.
Well, we got our answer to that question talking to defensive coordinator Greg Mattison this week.
Mattison said that cornerback Cary Williams, who was reinstated from a two-game suspension this week, has that ability. Ironically, Hamlin was let go because the team needed a roster spot for Williams once his suspension was up.
Chris Carr also has the ability to play safety, according to Mattison.
"[Williams] has played some safety, and Chris Carr has played some safety," Mattison said. "I know one thing: They would never put us in a position where we wouldn't have enough players to be able to get the job done. I just come to work, and that's their decision.
"We've already talked about what way we would go with that kind of thing."
Haruki Nakamura is the only true reserve safety on the roster right now behind starters Tom Zbikowski and Dawan Landry, but Nakamura can play both free safety and strong safety.
Because of his versatility, the Ravens feel like they can get away with their current roster situation for the time being, although they might look to bring on another safety at some point down the road.
"We just kind of got jammed up, numbers-wise, more than anything," head coach John Harbaugh said of the move to release Hamlin. "And it's just a situation where, like I told you, we didn't want to make any move, but we had to for the time being. Hopefully, we can kind of recoup that here in the near future.
"But Ken's a guy that has been really important to us the first two games. It's going to be a little bit tight without him in the back end, but we feel like we can manage it with our personnel. And we'll see what happens next week."
