If you're doing SSL work, something that does SSL decryption needs to be in front. So I can't do my fancy HAProxy routing rules on HTTP requests HAProxy can't

If you're doing SSL work, something that does SSL decryption needs to be in front. So I can't do my fancy HAProxy routing rules on HTTP requests HAProxy can't read--it would be reduced to a simple TCP-level balancer then. Basically, nginx is there for ssl, gzip, caching (redis/memcache mod), and all those http-plugin-goodness things. Simple proxy directly to HAProxy on loopback, which specializes in load balancing, traffic routing, failover, etc. Then, finally, the application code on N nodes behind HAProxy.