2017 NFL Draft Preview: Safeties

Safety may not be the best position in the draft, but it certainly is one of the most intriguing. The athletic ability and versatility of this class are almost enough to make me overlook the glaring flaws I notice when watching the tape. There is as much upside at safety as there is at any position, but it’s just as possible that we don’t get more than a couple reliable starters out of this year’s group.

Obi Melifonwu, Connecticut

Melifonwu leapt into the first round conversation at the combine, literally. He scored in the 99^th percentile in both the vertical leap and the broad jump, and he added on a not too shabby 95^th percentile 4.4 in the forty yard dash. And he did this all while standing 6-4 and weighing 224 pounds. He was the clear winner at the combine, proving to be one of the most athletic prospects in the draft. But even before his performance I was already on the Melifonwu bandwagon, and my liking for him has only waned slightly as I watched two more games worth of tape.

A long, lanky athlete, Melifonwu is at his best playing coverage in space. He can sit back in a deep zone and wipe away half the field, but where he really excels is when he’s put in man to man situations in the slot. He’s good enough in coverage that some teams reportedly like him as a cornerback, though I wouldn’t go quite that far. He reads routes well, and he attacks the catch point before the ball even comes out of the quarterback’s hands. He has excellent ball skills, even if he does need to improve at getting his head around on deep passes.

There are some criticisms to be levelled against him in the running game. At his best he can fly downhill and slice through blockers to make plays at or behind the line of scrimmage, using his incredible speed and long arm to corral running backs and receivers catching screens. But he is a bit too passive at times, preferring to slow play and let the ball come to him. It’s difficult to tell how serious an issue this will be at the next level. Is it something he was coached to do as the last line of defense, or is it genuine reluctance to trust his reads and throw his body into the play? The flashes are frequent enough to suggest the former, but it is still cause for concern.

There are rough edges to be patched in Melifonwu’s game. He sometimes doesn’t take the right angles in coverage, and he needs to refine his tackling. His athleticism is remarkable, but it doesn’t always show up on the field. He isn’t a sure thing, but given his pure ability and the skills he already possesses, his ceiling is the best safety in the league, well worth a selection in the top ten.

Budda Baker, Washington

If Baker was forty pounds heavier he would probably be the top linebacker in the draft. Unfortunately he’s a 195 pound safety, one whose aggression doesn’t make up for the fact that he gets pushed around too easily in the box. He is at his best around the line, but he isn’t a Mark Barron or Deone Buchanan type player who can hold down that position on a play by play basis, and his defensive coordinator is going to have to find creative ways to get him involved.

But in the right system Baker can be a lot of fun. The best word to describe him in college would probably be “pest”. He flew everywhere on the field, seemingly involved in every play and finding ways to get to the football. He ran slightly slower in the forty than Melifonwu, but he plays much faster on the field, trusting his instincts and letting himself break downhill the moment he thinks he sees something. And even in the rare case when his instincts lead him awry, he has elite quickness that allows him to change direction and recover back to where he’s supposed to be.

Baker is a sure tackler in space, even if his small stature means he’s often yanking ball carriers down by their ankles rather than stuffing them at contact. The biggest issues he faces come in coverage. He’s inconsistent in zone, and he gets burned regularly in man. But just as often his speed and playmaking ability bites back the other way. He makes sharp, aggressive breaks on the ball, and he could develop more skills in this area as his career goes on.

There are very clear downsides with Baker, and they will probably drag him into the second half of the first round. Some issues he can overcome with experience and coaching, but in many ways he will always be limited by his size. Put in the right situation he can be a grenade tossed into an offense’s carefully drawn schemes, but he could just as easily end up wasted by a defensive coordinator who doesn’t know how to utilize uniquely talented players.

Malik Hooker, Ohio State

Hooker is your traditional deep middle safety. He lurks, he watches the quarterback, and then he flies from sideline to sideline in coverage. He has excellent length and speed, and he takes great angles while the ball is in the air, capable of making phenomenal plays to flip the field and give his offense back the ball. As pass happy as the NFL is, he is the exact type of player you want in the league today, someone you can trust in the back to allow you to play more aggressive across the front.

Hooker is inexperienced. He’s been playing football for less than five years now, and he only started one season in college. And this inexperience shows up on the field on a frequent basis. He is fooled by fakes, and his recovery speed isn’t at the level of some of the elite safeties in the league. In run defense he often plays out of control, barreling forward with his head down in what ends as either a spectacular stop or a gruesome whiff. I don’t think he’s ready to start in the NFL on day one, and it may take until his second or third year before the team that drafts him can fully harness his skillset.

Right now Hooker projects as your standard free safety sitting back in deep coverage, but he has the potential to be much more versatile than that. It will be interesting to see how he develops, and how he’s used at the next level. He is just as sharp in underneath zones as he is over the top, and in man coverage he displays excellent anticipation and reaction, often breaking to disrupt a pass before a receiver has even completed his route. And there are moments in the running game as well where he looks like a future star. The potential is there, and I can almost justify someone taking a leap of faith and grabbing him just outside the top ten, even if he’s probably better suited down around twenty.

Jamal Adams, LSU

Adams has been a highly touted prospect for a while, but he may have pushed himself into the top five after running a reported 4.38 forty yard dash. And even though he doesn’t look quite that fast on the field, speed certainly isn’t an issue for him. He is aggressive, he covers a lot of ground, and when he gets someone squared up he is the most devastating hitter of any of the safeties I studied.

There is a lot of flash in Adams’s game, and not nearly as much substance. At times he can show up as a total game wrecker, coming down into the box and slicing into the backfield to disrupt plays before they can develop. He struggles to disengage from blockers, but no more than normal for a safety, and he has decent size at 214 pounds. He won’t be an every down box player, but he can float through there over the course of a game. And when he makes the right read, he can be terrifying. It’s knowing what he’s supposed to do and how he’s supposed to do it that he still needs a lot of work on.

Aggression is Adams’s greatest strength, but it is also his greatest weakness. He fires downhill the moment he sees any opening, even if that opening isn’t actually there. He bites hard on fakes, and he takes poor angles through traffic, letting ball carriers cut it back beneath him or escape to the outside. He isn’t a reliable tackler, and he will occasionally whiff altogether as he throws himself in for a big hit rather than wrapping up.

These are issues that can be corrected in the NFL. A bigger concern is his difficulty in coverage. His aggressiveness often leads him out of position in zones, and I would not trust him guarding the back end of my defense. And in man he often gets fooled by double moves or gets caught with his eyes in the backfield, and he doesn’t possess the same sort of recovery ability that lets someone like Baker get away with these momentary lapses. And this is something I worry he will never fully develop, and something that would make me reluctant to take him before the end of the first round.

Jabrill Peppers, Michigan

I’ve watched three games of Peppers, and I still have no idea how I feel about him. He is the most perplexing player in the draft, largely because I still struggle with whether I should even call him a football player. He is certainly a tremendous athlete, but even after two years with one of the best coaching staffs in football he still has absolutely no idea what he’s doing on the field.

With a player like Peppers the best approach is to just list all the things he can and can’t do. He can cover a lot of ground. His speed messes with the heads of the players on offense, convincing blockers they can reach him on angles he outruns and ball carriers that they can beat him to the edge. When he lets loose, he is playing at a different pace than every other player on the field. He’s an excellent blitzer, and he has good vision for picking lanes to shoot through to make plays in the backfield.

Now, what he can’t do. He played primarily linebacker his final year at Michigan, but he can’t play therein the NFL. He was regularly abused by college blockers, and they only get bigger and more physical in the NFL. He can’t be trusted in coverage, man or zone. He gets caught peeking too easily and loses track of his responsibility, and he doesn’t show even basic recognition of route development. His instincts are poor, and everything is about reacting rather than anticipating. He is a step slow to start every movement, and even his electric speed isn’t always enough to make up for that.

Peppers is a safety on defense because he doesn’t have any other position to play, and I’m not even sure he can fit in this role. At Michigan he was essentially a wild card, a luxury afforded to them by having one of the deepest and most talented defenses in college football. The other ten starters were good enough to shut down most offenses on their own, so they could happily strip Peppers of responsibility to let him fly wherever he felt like and wreak havoc on an offense.

This is something that can work in the NFL. Troy Polamalu became one of the greatest safeties of all time in a similar role. But he was part of a historically great defense, in a scheme built to suit his talents, and he possessed instincts that are far beyond anything Peppers has shown. Peppers can play safety, and he can be a great one. But it will take a lot of things to break right, both for him as a player and for the circumstances he finds himself in.

The one thing we can say for certain about Peppers is this: he is one hell of a returner. He is at his best with the ball in his hands, and many believe he may actually be better as a running back. Normally I scoff at these claims, but this is one case where I see the sense to them. Peppers won’t ever be a feature running back, but if he’s destined to be a gimmick, it’s far easier and safer to contribute as a gimmick on offense than on defense. I wouldn’t draft him with the intention of converting him, but I would keep myself open to the possibility, and there is enough flexibility and potential here that I might be tempted to pull the trigger sometime late in the second round.

Justin Evans, Texas A&M

Evans is another player that many are discussing a potential position change for, though his is slightly more reasonable. I’ve heard rumors that several NFL teams like him more as a cornerback than a safety, and I can kind of see it. He is at his best in coverage, where his long frame, good speed, and fantastic ball skills make him capable of game changing plays. He still has work to do to improve in man coverage, and he’s at his best in a deep zone where he can read the quarterback and fly in a straight line to the ball. But I can justify his move to cornerback for one primary reason: it will significantly decrease the number of times he is asked to tackle.

I cannot stress enough just how bad Evans is when he tries to tackle a ball carrier. Each time I watched him I went in thinking to myself that it couldn’t be as bad as I remembered. And each time I was wrong. In a lot of ways watching him try to tackle was one of the most fun parts of this draft process. Every time he came down charging towards the ball carrier, I found myself wondering how he was going to screw it up. And every time he seemed to find new ways to surprise me. He took bad angles, he got run over, he flew past without touching anyone, he got stiffarmed, he got dragged for an extra ten yards, he got juked. I am not exaggerating when I said that the most surprising outcome was the rare occasion he managed to make a routine tackle.

Evans is a classic problem. Can a player survive in the NFL if they are missing an essential skill? The answer is yes, they can, if their other skills are enough to make up for it. Evans’s are not. At best he is an above average cover safety who is a liability whenever the ball comes his way. And this is not something that will ever be fixed. This isn’t an issue of desire or attitude. He never had a problem sticking his nose into a play, he was just bad at it. And even if he makes a significant improvement at the next level he will still be among the worst tacklers in the league, and I struggle to imagine him ever having any place in a defensive unit.