Unsafe Safety Class

Safety is one of our big needs this offseason. I had time to do a cursory review of many of the safeties available in this year’s draft, and here are my impressions. This is a bit different from my profile of edge rushers. For the edge rushers I watched pretty much everything I could find, and watched some of their games 2 or 3 times each. For the safeties, other than as noted below I watched 2-3 games on draftbreakdown.com, and watched them once. So, this is much less detailed review (other than Collins and Holliman, who I’ve watched a lot more of). The punch line is that I don’t think I’d go safety at all in the 1[SUP]st[/SUP] 3 rounds of this draft, other than taking Rowe as a corner who could be a good safety if corner doesn’t work out for him. So here we go:

Landon Collins, Alabama – I had already watched plenty of Collins, and my impression is that he’s a throwback player to the days when it was OK if your strong safety was a bit of a liability against the pass if he was good against the run. I was listening to “Movin the Chains” yesterday, and Gil Brandt had apparently noted that he was burned 26 times on 51 passes to his guy or zone last season. That’s worse than a 50% burn rate. That’s what my eyes tell me as well. I wouldn’t touch him in the 1[SUP]st[/SUP], and will probably have guys ahead of him on my board in the 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] as well. I think he’s a big time bust candidate, despite being a good college player and team leader, because I don’t see his game translating to the next level – ala Tim Tebow, perhaps the greatest college player of all time. Let the hate mail flow from Collins fans….

Gerold Holliman, Louisville – So, how can a guy with 14 interceptions in one season in an FBS conference be ranked by some as undraftable? He could be an all pro if the NFL was a flag football league. His ball skills and play diagnosis as a center fielder are really good. However, his tackling is simply the worst I’ve ever seen in a player that I’ve profiled. The absolute worst. No effort. No physicality. No nothing. I can’t see how coaching can overcome this profound of a lack of interest in the physical aspects of the game. I wouldn’t draft him before our 6[SUP]th[/SUP] round comp pick, and wouldn’t shed a tear if we bypassed him in the 7[SUP]th[/SUP] – even of we didn’t draft a safety in the prior six rounds.

Cody Prewitt, Ole Miss – There’s nothing that I see that screams “starting NFL safety” about this kid. He has good instincts and ball skills as a center fielder, but when he has to chase down a ballcarrier his lack of game speed is apparent. He’s an adequate tackler, but he only “tackles” – he rarely “hits.” He may be able to hang on for a few years as a fringe starter, but as a starter he’ll be a player that his team looks to upgrade from pretty quickly.

Derron Smith, Fresno State – My impression of him is very similar to my impression of Prewitt. So much so that I’ll just save time and say “ditto.” He’s a bit faster, but is also a bit weaker tackling.

Kurtis Drummond, Michigan State – Slooowwww twiiitttch… Drummond is a technically sound safety who plays his responsibilities well if he doesn’t have to react quickly. He’ll stride downfield along side a receiver or TE well, and be in position to make a play on those longer developing routes. He fills the gap on run plays straight at him pretty well. However, I see almost extraordinary limitations when he has to react quickly in space. He consistently gets beat on juke steps and quick routes because he seems to lack any quick twitch reflexes whatsoever. I like him as a college player, but I can’t see him being much of a pro.

Ibraheim Campbell, Northwestern – This is a guy that I might take a chance on in the 4[SUP]th[/SUP] round or later, depending on who else is available. He is a very sure tackler, and looks good enough in zone coverage to not be a liability in a zone defense. I didn’t see him play much man, but when I did he didn’t look quite as good as he did in zone. He shows good ball skills, and in the limited reps where I saw him cover deep he seemed to be in the right place at the right time (including an int vs. Michigan). He’s not ready to see the field in 2015, but can become a starting strong safety in the future.

Anthony Harris, Virginia – I really, really like him as a downfield pass defender. He may be the best safety in this class at defending the pass in zone coverage, and even looked good in man. He can cover deep and come up and make aggressive plays on the ball 5 yards downfield. The problem is tackling. Unlike Holliman, he tries hard, and he does a good job against 190 lb. receivers. However, an NFL safety needs to handle TEs and be the last line of defense against 215+ lb. RBs, and he has a lot of trouble there because he’s just not strong. I thought that he looked really skinny on tape, so I looked up his combine measurements and he was 6’1”, 183. That is REALLY skinny for an NFL safety. Can he gain 15 lbs and retain his speed and quickness in coverage? I don’t know. I might be OK with him in the 4[SUP]th[/SUP] or later, but he needs to get bigger and stronger to be a starter. He’s a guy who could see the field in 2015 in sub packages because he’s so darn good in coverage, but he has a long road ahead to be a 3 down safety.

Jaquiski Tartt, Samford – draftbreakdown.com only has his Auburn tape, so that’s all that I watched. There’s something here with this kid, but it’s hard to tell with only 1 game tape. He plays with decent speed and fluidity, and had some decent tackles – but a couple of bad angle misses as well. I can’t peg him to a round based on film, but when I read about his height/weight/speed, stats, and leadership, I wonder if this is a guy who can be a good starting strong safety down the road. I’m seeing him rated as high as the 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] round – not sure I’d go there, but maybe 4[SUP]th[/SUP] round or later.

That’s it for now. Maybe I’ll have a chance to watch a few more safeties before the draft.

 

I don't see where I said that you need to have corners playing safety at any time in the post above. However, in other threads I have pointed out a trend toward college corners becoming very good safeties - Earl Thomas, Jairus Byrd, Aaron Williams, Glover Quin to name a few. I certainly don't exclude college safeties from being great pro safety prospects, I just see this safety class as being very weak.

With respect to Rowe, I see him as a scheme fit for us at corner. I don't see him as a 1st round corner prospect for us, as he needs some work at that position - particularly because he has a tendency to get burned deep when he is asked to man up. However, he has the tools to be a really good corner in our scheme where corners are usually not put on an island. There is only 1 tape of his on draft breakdown as a safety, and it's from 2012. In that game he plays mostly single high safety - and I mean high. He's lined up off the screen on most plays. In that game Arizona just killed Utah in the run game, and Rowe reliably provided the last line of defense. He's a very sure tackler, and seems to play well with the action in front of him. To project him as a safety, I have to mostly use his tape at corner, and while I do see the ability to play safety, I think I see even more ability to play corner - in our scheme. That's why I said that he could be a safety if corner doesn't work out.

With respect to Collins, I'll point out that the big in-the-box run-first safety is becoming a bit of a dying breed in the NFL, and it's happening for a reason - the rules favoring the passing game. I have no doubt that he'd instantly improve our run defense, but thinking back over the past few years, many folks on this board have been complaining about Troy no longer being good in coverage. Well, I think that reality is that it's been a combination of Troy's skills slipping, and Troy never really being that good in coverage to begin with. The game evolved, and his skill set started to be a bit less relevant to what opponents were doing offensively. That said, even now Troy is vastly superior to Collins in coverage, so to bring in Collins simply adds to the pass defense woes. When I say that Collins has big-time bust potential, I mean relative to his draft status. I probably shouldn't have used Tebow as a comparison, because he ended up being out of the league pretty quickly. I think a better example is Ziggy Hood - drafted in the 1st round, but has had an NFL career that would be expected from a 3rd-4th rounder. I don't think Collins is a bad player. I think that 10-12 years ago he'd be a no-brainer as a top 15-20 pick. I just think he's a tweener by today's standards. Too small to be a LB, but lacking the range to be a top-tier NFL safety. That's not 1st round value to me. Anyway, that's what I see and we'll have to agree to disagree.

 

OK... If you had said that you think Holliman's tackling issues are correctable by good coaching, and that I'm being overly harsh in my evaluation because of that, I could understand it fully. Evaluations are very subjective. However, you've instead gone down the road of saying that it's OK for a FREE SAFETY to be a crappy tackler. It's no problem because all he has to do is break up and intercept passes, right? Who cares if every time he has to be the last line of defense the runner blows through him and takes it to the house? Yeah, that makes sense....

Oh, and your comparison is Deion Sander - a corner, not a safety, and the best man vs. man cover corner of all time. So, Holliman's game translates to that of Deion Sanders?

Wow, just wow...

 

I'd be good with taking Harris at the right spot in the draft. He lacks physical strength, but he at least TRIES to make the tackle, and I saw a couple of times where he at least slowed a bigger guy up enough for help to arrive. He is a nice pass defending free safety.

 

Thank you. Not sure if I'll get to Randall, but if I do I will amend this thread.