Ya, that's a nice statement on paper but not always possible, not to mention in that scene Hummels tackles the player because noone else did stop him before.
Quite often, he relies on his tackles to recover from a situation caused by his own positioning or from him misjudging the situation before, though that may be a calculated risk, maybe that's the price to pay when playing with two fullbacks who are more wingers and a midfield less defensive-minded than the original van Bommel/Martinez/Schweisteiger-time, but i see that from him in the Nationalmannschaft as well.
Those hail-Marys are all fine if they work, they sometimes are needed of course, and its an asset if a CB can do them. But as it is a matter of milliseconds whether it is a tackle or a foul, a matter of speed and timing and those don't tend to improve once a player hits 30, so with Süle improving at his current rate, who also has the advantage of being about twice as fast, and Pavard on the way in, i doubt he can rely upon being first team choice very much longer. His playmaking skills are all very well but were more important in a Pep-like system maybe, or in Klopps counterpressing lightning fast switch-to attack-all-men-forward style.
It isn't as if Bayern was short on players being able to play good wide passes.
That's a thing a lot of people always ignore, Hummels is the kind of defender who fixes many defensive errors by his team mates because he doesn't shy away from such situations. It is sometimes the opposite with Boateng who is too cautious to commit (see the goal of Hoffenheim last week).
Due to his Hummels sometimes looks bad because he puts himself in difficult situations but him and Süle are our only "no nonsense"-defenders and Hummels has shown in his whole career that he is someone who makes his follow defenders better, it's not like he has been surrounded by defensive giants hin his career or played in teams that were mainly about defending.
Those two statements are interesting because his tendency to "fix other defenders errors" is one of the qualms i have about him. What i often saw him doing was, for me, an expression of mistrust in his fellow teammates abilites, that "ah stay away, i'll do it myself proper" attitude. That's the opposite of "making fellow teammembers better". See his body language at several post-Klopp BVB matches. Win the ball, run forward 20m, play a genius pass your teammate is too stupid to anticipate, counterattack follows, Mr. Hummels can't be bothered to even backtrack.
He's done it less in his Bayern time, maybe he matured or he is happier with the quality of his sidekicks, but that is a sort of attitude i have hated all my life in a player.
