The Rise of the NFL Safety

The old adage of running the football and playing defense to win in the playoffs held true in the AFC this season, with the Ravens and Steelers playing for the conference championship in addition to the Titans having the best record in football. The NFC was a wild ride of vastly contrasting styles. The Cardinals represented the conference in the Super Bowl by spreading you out and throwing it to two all-word receivers. Philly is a good defensive team but they don't even really pretend to be a true running team...choosing to make most of their noise in the short passing game (in part to take advatange of Brian Westbrook). The Giants and Panthers tied for the best record in the NFC, the Giants doing it with a great defense...the Panthers really doing it with smoke and mirrors.

So, what links Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Arizona, and Philadelphia together? An outstanding, do everything safety. It doesn't even really matter if the guy is a free or strong safety. Ed Reed plays free safety, makes tons of plays, and essentially makes the middle of the field a very difficult place to attack. Troy Polamalu plays strong safety and is an absolute run stuffer. He's also strong enough to play man-to-man against a tight end and fast enough to cover a 3rd wide receiver in a nickel look. These are the two most obvious ones, but the other "final four" teams had underrated safeties roaming their secondary. The Eagles did it a bit by committee with Brian Dawkins and Quintin Mikell finishing 2nd and 3rd on the team in tackles, as well as combining for 8 forced fumbles and 4 interceptions. Both guys started every game. Arizona had Antrel Rolle, a young 4th year guy who was 2nd on the team in tackles...though only had 1 INT, mostly because teams stayed away from him based on 5 picks last year.

So, what does is mean? Is the saftey position going to join QB, CB, OT, DT, and DE as a sort of premium position because guys are hard to find? We've seen this before with the emergence of TE that can do more than run block and sneak into the flat for the occasional pass. At tight end, Tony Gonzalez and Shannon Sharpe redefined the position, and it looked like (at least for a couple of years) that an athletic tight end might be required to be among the best offenses in football. That ultimately hasn't panned out for a couple reasons 1) The dropoff after Gonzalez, Gates, Winslow, and Shockey is pretty large and 2) Teams found ways to get "3rd receiver" production by using more spread sets and getting guys like Wes Welker and Brandon Stokely the ball in space.

True game-changing safeties like Reed and Polamalu will be hard enough to find that I think we'll see something similar to the evolution of the tight end. Teams that have one will have an advantage, at least in the short term, but one coming along that's good enough to spend a first round, or especially early first round, pick on will be rare. Teams that don't have one might try to find TWO elite corners, so their safeties don't need to be relied on in coverage (what the Cowboys tried, and failed, with Roy Williams...really never find a guy to play opposite Newman). Or maybe you try to have a top 5 type guy at DT and LB, to keep your safeties from being needed in run support as much (kinda the Bears strategy with Tommie Harris, Lance Briggs, and Brian Urlacher...Mike Brown is serviceable with that supporting cast).

Right now, the safety position is probably as important as it has ever been in the NFL. It'll be interesting to see how that evolves.