2019 Linebacker and Safety Prospects

After covering wide receivers and cornerbacks a week ago, we’re onto the second week of my NFL Draft Prospect Rankings. As I usually do, I have combined linebackers and safeties into a single group. Partially since their roles overlap so much in the modern NFL game, partially because there aren’t enough first round talents at these positions for me to justify each having their own list.

As always, listed in descending order of how I would select them.

Kenneth Murray, LB, Oklahoma

Murray is a rare sort of linebacker. There are only a handful of players athletic enough to cover the field sideline to sideline, and there are even fewer who bring with it the punch to stuff a running back in a hole. He is freakishly athletic and explosive, and he lays some absolutely devastating hits on ball carriers in space. Each game he makes a couple truly beautiful plays in run defense where he reads the play, scrapes to the hole, and fires downhill to stuff the running back at the line of scrimmage.

Murray is a bit raw in some areas, and it will be a couple years before he can really live up to his potential as one of the best linebackers in football. He makes some phenomenal plays sifting through traffic to get to the ball carrier, but if an opposing lineman gets his hands on Murray the play is basically over. He needs to get a lot better at playing through contact, either shedding the blocker or driving him backwards to muddy up a running lane.

Coverage skills are a crapshoot, as they usually are for young linebackers entering the NFL. He certainly has the athletic ability to keep up in coverage, and he showed flashes in college. He has good awareness on his zone drops, and he alternated great plays in man coverage with some truly ugly missteps. One major thing he has to learn is better recognition of play action, to take only a single step forward before reacting backwards to cut off the passing lane. With his explosive running and leaping ability, I think this development could very easily be in the cards.

Murray isn’t a perfect linebacker prospect, but he’s got a hell of an upside ahead of him. Mostly he just needs reps. He needs to watch more plays develop in front of him, and he needs to slam into more linemen coming downhill. When it all clicks in place for him, his ferocity and closing speed could make him one of the most feared players in the NFL. And even with the downside risk, I’d be fine taking him in the top half of the first round.

Isaiah Simmons, LB/S, Clemson

I have some concerns about Simmons, as you can see from where I have him rated, but there is no questioning his physical gifts. There simply aren’t human beings who are 6-4 and 238 pounds and who run a 4.39 forty yard dash with a 39 inch vertical. The only thing more unique than his athleticism was the role he played in Clemson’s defense. On any given play he was either a linebacker or a slot corner or a deep safety or an edge rusher. Athleticism and versatility, that is what Simmons brings to the table.

Of course, playing a lot of positions only has so much value if a player isn’t actually all that great at most of them. And that’s more or less what I saw from Simmons. As a slot cornerback he was burned repeatedly in man coverage and had a habit of drifting out of his zones. As a linebacker he gave up a lot of ground and got pushed around by blockers. As a pass rusher he brought pretty much nothing to the table but pure straight line speed.

The Simmons that most people seem to be falling in love with is a bigger version of Derwin James, a player who I loved coming out of Florida State in 2018. But the player I saw when I watched him at Clemson was closer to another safety from that draft class, Minkah Fitzpatrick. Specifically Fitzpatrick’s underwhelming rookie year in Miami. With the Dolphins he was asked to do too much too quickly, and he never really figured out his role, leading him to be passive and hesitant as he bounced around the field. That's what I saw a lot from Simmons, a player who rarely seemed comfortable enough with the reads he was making to let himself loose.

Of course after being traded to Pittsburgh early last season, Fitpatrick thrived in a more traditional role as a deep safety, earning first team All Pro honors at the end of the season. And this is what makes Simmons still worth a selection in the mid-to-late first round. Rather than stifling him by asking him to do way too much, keep it simple and let his athleticism come through with aggression. When he does fire downhill he makes plays that no one else can make, using his closing speed and length to feel like he’s covering the entire field in a single moment.

So what position is best for Simmons? I’m not entirely sure, and that gives me some pause (I faced a similar dilemma with Jabrill Peppers a few years ago, and that comparison certainly scares me). If I had to pick one position, I would likely follow the Fitzpatrick model and stick him at deep safety. This likely has the highest learning curve of any position, since it was the one he played the least in college, but it has the highest ceiling as well. With his length and athleticism he could erase huge chunks of the field in coverage, if he ever develops the instincts needed to utilize his gifts.

Antoine Winfield Jr, S, Minnesota

I’m not going to pretend I can be impartial about a player named Antoine Winfield. His father is one of my favorite players of all time, and there are definitely echoes of the elder Winfield’s style in the younger’s game. He plays a different position, safety rather than cornerback, but he brings a similar combination of physicality and versatility to the table, even if he applies it in a different way.

Winfield spent most of his time at Minnesota playing in a deep zone, and I think that’s where he’ll find his best fit in the NFL. He didn’t show a lot of range from sideline to sideline, but his 4.46 forty and his flashes of closing speed on the field suggest that he could develop more of this, once he gets better at play recognition. And his ball skills are the best in the class. He attacks the football in the air, and he makes plays through traffic to take the ball away from the offense.

Winfield does enough other things well to make him worthy of a pick late in the first round. He fires downhill aggressively in run support, though he has a habit of getting caught up in traffic and probably shouldn’t spend too much time playing in the box. He’s a sure tackler, even if he occasionally gets dragged an extra yard or two. He plays bigger than his 5-9 stature, but this will still be an issue. He’s strong enough to disrupt bigger receivers and tight ends on their routes, but I do worry some about him in man coverage. Fortunately in the right system he won’t have to play much of this, and he’ll be able to develop into a true ball-hawking safety in the deep middle.

Xavier McKinney, S, Alabama

You know what you’re going to get when you draft McKinney. There isn’t much downside here, and not a lot of upside either. He’s a very smart player who makes excellent reads and is always in position. He’s also a subpar athlete who doesn’t cover a lot of ground and makes very few spectacular plays. He’ll be a decent starter from the moment he enters the league, and he’ll never be much more than that.

McKinney’s greatest strength is in man coverage. He excels when lined up over a receiver in the slot, able to match them break for break as they try to get open on underneath routes. I’m a bit worried what will happen when he faces a vertical route, but playing on the inside he’ll at least be in better position to have help from a safety behind him. He’s good enough in coverage that if he was a better athlete I would think about him moving to cornerback full time, but as it is I think defenses won’t want him matched up on an island against most NFL receivers.

Apart from that, he really doesn’t do anything special. He can deliver some good sticks on tackles in tight windows, but he’s a poor tackler in space, playing out of control and often just lunging past the ball carrier. He doesn’t cover much ground laterally in a deep zone, though he makes up for it somewhat by usually making smart reads and getting early breaks on the ball. He can do a variety of things in the NFL, but he won’t really excel at them. Still, his reliability makes him worth a second round pick.

Grant Delpit, S, LSU

We didn’t get testing numbers on Delpit, but we really don’t need them. He’s fast, and he’s explosive, and he is pretty much always putting those skills on display on the field. I criticized Simmons for not being aggressive enough, but Delpit has the opposite problem. He fires out of a cannon on every single play, and seemingly in every single direction. Sometimes it works out and it’s a stunning, explosive play. Other times he runs in completely the wrong direction and lets the defense break down behind him.

It feels like Delpit is on every part of the field at once, but what he does in those parts of the field leaves more than a little to be desired. When he hits someone square, he can deliver a blow that knocks them backwards in time. But more often than not he goes for this blow and gets nothing but air, as a single cut leaves him skidding past across the ground. He’s a dreadful tackler, and he can’t be relied on in run support. Which makes it frustrating that he plays like a run stuffing, lane filling safety.

Delpit is going to need to change his mentality in the NFL. With his length, his ball skills, and his speed, he has all the makings of a terror in a deep zone. But he needs to figure out how to read plays from this position, and how to take proper angles to cut receivers off at the sideline. He also needs to develop in man coverage, but he has the talent to do this as well. He has the talent to do a lot of things, and as many flaws as there are in his game, I can’t see letting him slide far into the second round before taking him on the off chance he can figure it out.

Patrick Queen, LB, LSU

Queen is another athletic, frenetic linebacker. A clear step down from someone as well rounded as Murray, but still a player with some upside to develop into an above average starter. In terms of covering ground he’s as good as any linebacker I can remember watching. There is never a play where he can just be ignored because he’s on the backside, and nothing to the edge that he can’t run down.

Queen covers so much ground that he can often get away with taking a path other than the most direct one to the football. He can loop all the way around blockers and then cut back to make a play on the inside. Which is fortunate, because if he can’t go around a blocker, there’s nothing he can do about him. At 229 pounds he is small for a linebacker, and he gets pushed around by linemen moving downfield to him. He’s pretty good at disengaging after initial contact, but initial contact has a habit of knocking him backwards a couple of yards.

The other big concern I have with Queen is in pass coverage. Like Murray he has all the physical tools he needs to develop in that area, but unlike Murray there was never really a moment where he showed that he understood the concepts behind pass coverage. Mostly he just stood there, in a zone without much depth and without even a pretense of looking for a wide receiver. Obviously this is mostly mental, and he can pick up more of these skills after some time in the NFL. But it’s bad enough that I don’t think he can be allowed to learn on the field, at least not as anything more than a first and second down specialist. It will take a couple years to get anything from Queen, and even then he will be limited somewhat by his lack of physicality, which is why I think his value is a better fit in the latter half of the second round.

Ashtyn Davis, S, Cal

If you miss out on McKinney but still want a reliable if unspectacular safety on the back end, Davis is a good option once the third round rolls around. He brings a lot of experience playing in a deep zone, and he knows how to read routes developing underneath him. His positioning is usually excellent, and he rarely makes mental mistakes, which is always a good thing to have from the last line of defense.

Apart from that, there’s not much to say about Davis. He doesn’t cover a lot of ground, either moving laterally to cut off routes or coming up in run support. He’s a consistent tackler in space, but he usually takes the most conservative angle possible, sacrificing a couple extra yards each time. And most notably, he lacks McKinney’s gifts in man coverage. He’s capable of playing that role in a defense, but you wouldn’t want to ask him to do it on every snap.

The one thing I will say about Davis is that his ball skills are sensational. He goes up high, and he always times his leaps perfectly. He tracks the ball well in the air, and he has soft hands to come down with the takeaway. He’ll probably end up putting up decent interception numbers in the NFL, making up somewhat for the sheer number of plays his lack of athleticism prevents him from reaching.