Earlier in the offseason I looked at the trends in positional value in the post “Positional Value, Free Agency, and the Draft” and wanted to dig into safety a bit more as the position is rising in importance.
The top end of the safety market is one of the fastest increasing position groups
Historically safety has always been one of the lowest paid positions and has stayed fairly static at around 7% of total cap for the position. And in 2022, safety still ranks 8th in average pay ahead of only running back, interior offensive line, linerbacker, tight ends, and specialists.
But if you look at the top end of the market, safety is one of the fastest accelerating position in pay. The average salary across all positions has increased 33% between 2015 and 2022 but when looking at the top 5 at each position, average safety pay increased 85% in the same period, ranking 4th behind only pass rushers, defensive tackles, and linebackers. For the top 10 at each position, safety is 5th at a 75% increase.
| Top 5 Cap Hit | Top 5 2015-2022 Growth | Top 10 Cap Hit | Top 10 2015-2022 Growth | |
| DT | $21,7M | 123% | $17.3M | 108% |
| LB | $15.9M | 102% | $12.4M | 77% |
| OLB | $22.4M | 100% | $18.0M | 94% |
| S | $15.5M | 85% | $13.1M | 75% |
| OT | $19.2M | 79% | $17.9M | 85% |
| QB | $33.1M | 65% | $28.7M | 58% |
| TE | $12.5M | 43% | $11.0M | 47% |
| CB | $19.1M | 41% | $16.2M | 36% |
| G | $10.5M | 41% | $9.1M | 31% |
| RB | $13.1M | 30% | $9.8M | 27% |
| WR | $18.4M | 26% | $16.0M | 31% |
| C | $11.3M | 12% | $9.7M | 25% |
| DE | $17.4M | 8% | $15.3M | 24% |
If you look at free agency, the top end of the safety market is accelerating even faster. So far in 2022, the top 10 safeties have signed contacts with a total AAV of $83.9M, up 85% from 2021 alone. Free agency signing data is less stable year-to-year because of the quality of free agents available. But while 2022 has had some very good safeties hit the market like Marcus Williams, Tyrann Mathieu, DeShon Elliott, and D.J. Reed, this year’s safety class is only slightly higher quality than past years (using Approximate Value, 2022’s top 10 safeties averaged 6.01 AV vs. an average AV of 5.93 over the past 5 years). Quality comes nowhere near explaining the increase in what the top safeties are being paid.
And the impact of safeties on the game today is rising. In PFF’s listing of wins above replacement (WAR) by position (“Using Pro-Adjusted Wins Above Average to examine positional value in the NFL Draft“), safety is third on the list behind quarterback and cornerback and right ahead of wide receiver. The 2020 season was the first time that the average across the league was over 50% of snaps where defenses lined up with middle of the field open looks and two high safeties and this is driving the change.
This year’s draft class was the best safety class since 2018
Coupled with the free agency boom, 2022 also saw the best safety draft class since 2018. After back-to-back years without a 1st round safety, three went this year with Kyle Hamilton to Baltimore, Daxton Hill to Cincinnati, and Lewis Cine to Minnesota. And six more were taken on day 2 with the Colts, Chargers, Lions, Bears, Texans, and Chiefs also taking safeties.
Cincinnati may be hedging against losing Jessie Bates but got a versatile safety that can play all over. Minnesota already has Harrison Smith, one of the league’s best safeties, but will be moving to much more two-high safety in 2022 and brought in my favorite safety in the draft. And Baltimore, after signing Marcus Williams in free agency, took Kyle Hamilton at pick 14.
Like all positions, quality players are drafted earlier in the draft. The below shows all safeties drafted from 2015-2021 and their player value (average AV per year) by their draft location. Generally, AV values around 6 are good starters – for context, Rodney McLeod averaged 6AV in his time with the Eagles, Tyrann Mathieu has been around 8AV, and Marcus Williams has been around 6AV.
Since 2015, only 2 out of 77 safeties drafted after the 3rd round hit an AV of 6 or higher (DeShon Elliott and Jordan Fuller) with 2 others close (Kamren Curl and Jordan Whitehead). With 9 safeties taken in the first three rounds this year, teams are banking on getting an impact safety.
Every team is investing in safety either through the draft or free agency
When looking at teams’ investment in the safety position on both 2022 salary cap and 2019-2022 draft capital, most teams are doing one or the other. Below shows each team’s percentage of cap allocated to safeties in 2022 on the Y-axis and the draft capital used on safeties over the past four drafts on the X-axis (draft capital is calculated using expected AV by each draft slot).
As a quick look at the two-high safety teams, they have generally been at the top of the league in either drafting or paying safeties.
- Broncos – Although Fangio is now gone from Denver, they are left with Justin Simmons, one of the league’s best safeties, and Kareem Jackson. Over the past 3 years, the Broncos have spent the 2nd most in the league on safeties, nearing 12% of the cap.
- Rams – Despite their perpetual lack of high draft picks, the Rams have used the 4th most draft capital on safeties with four safeties drafted over the past four year – in 2019 they took 2nd rounder Taylor Rapp and 7th rounder Nick Scott and in 2020 6th rounder Jordan Fuller and 3rd rounder Terrell Burgess.
- Bears – They are 4th in the league in salary cap used on safeties and just drafted Jaquan Brisker in the 2nd round this year.
- Chargers – The Chargers are 5th in the league in draft capital used and have 1st round star Derwin James on the last year of his rookie deal.
- Vikings – 7th in the league in draft capital used, this year they added to Harrison Smith, one of the league’s better safeties, when they drafted Lewis Cine in the 1st after taking Camryn Bynum in the 4th last year.
- Packers – The Packers are the one team that is not above league average on spend or draft capital with Adrian Amos and 2019 1st rounder Darnell Savage.
And looking more broadly at the league, the same holds true with teams getting their safeties one way or another and either falling in the top left (spending above average) or bottom right (drafting above average).
Only a handful of teams are materially below averages on both cap space and draft capital used – Houston, Carolina, Dallas, and Philly.
Carolina – The Panthers are in better shape than their placement shows as they still have Jeremy Chinn on his rookie contract and signed Xavier Woods to a 3 year, $15M free agency contract with only $2.8M of that hitting the 2022 cap.
Houston – The Texans lost Justin Reid to the Chiefs in one of the big safety free agency signings this offseason (3-year, $31.5M). To replace their safety hole, they took Jalen Pitre at R2-37 in this year’s draft.
Dallas – Like Carolina, Dallas is in a bit better position than they appear hear. While they haven’t invested in the draft at all (they have not used above a 6th round pick on a safety since 2016), they picked up a cheap and young Jayron Kearse from Baltimore last offseason and just extended him to a 2-year, $10M deal with only $3.7M hitting in 2022.
Which brings us to the Eagles…
Their safety group is thin and not proven. Anthony Harris was brought back on a 1-year and it made all the sense in the world to bring back him or Rodney McLeod. At the other safety spot, it will be Marcus Epps, who played well in just over 500 snaps last season, and K’Von Wallace, a 2020 4th rounder and the highest safety taken by Howie since Jaylen Watkins in 2014. K’Von has flashed at times but just wasn’t on the field enough last season due to injury.
The issue is how proven the group is. It can absolutely be upgraded and the Eagles need to invest here, but there is some room for optimism. Below shows safeties with their run and coverage grades for the 2021 season – Epps in over 500 snaps showed a lot, grading above average against the pass and run.
It is obviously a passing league but one thing I like to look at is how effective a safety is against the run from depth as this is what is increasingly being asked of deep safeties. A safety’s ability to generate run stops, defined as a when a defender makes a tackle that causes a failure for the offense, is highly dependent on how often they align near the line of scrimmage – the more a safety is in the box, the more run stops they will have. Below shows run stop percentage vs. the percentage of time a safety aligns deep – it is an obvious and strong correlation. None of the Eagles safeties really stand out here as they are all around the trendline.
But if you adjust a safety’s run stop rate by the amount of time they align deep, you get a better view of which safeties are able to impact the run game based on their opportunities. Here, Epps and K’Von (although K’Von has a small sample size with only 183 snaps last year) both really stand out – they both played deep at such a high percentage of time and despite that, were able to generate a high rate of run stops.
Below are three clips of Epps that show his ability to cover from deep, both in the passing and run game. In the first clip, he covers J.D. McKissic crossing from a single-high alignment and comes away with an interception when he meets the ball at contact. The second clip he again closes from single-high for a run stop when the defensive line and linebackers were all sealed off with the exception of Eric Wilson who slips and falls. And the third clip where he again closes quickly from single-high to make a run stop after T.J. Edwards misses a tackle.
And the snaps he got last year, Epps did this fairly consistently:
- Of safeties with at least 20 targets, Epps is 11th in the league with only 3.5 YAC/reception allowed and 14th in the league with a 14% forced incompletion rate
- 8th in the league with a 4.0% missed tackle rate
- 11 stops on 537 snaps despite aligning deep 61% of the time
Looking ahead
The Eagles reportedly were looking in free agency to make a move at safety as they were in play for both Marcus Williams and Tyrann Mathieu but were outbid on both. While most Eagles fans were upset here, they were right to not go too high or too long on these deals. Marcus Williams is young and very good and if you were going to pay up, he would have been the one to get. But to outbid 5 years and $70M is tough to do. Tyrann got 3 years and $28M on a deal that would take him to age 33 and unlike most in Philly, it was not one I was ever interested in.
In the draft, we won’t know how serious they were on safety outside of confirmed top-30 visits with Jalen Pitre and Jaquan Brisker, both of whom were gone before the Eagles 2nd round pick. Bryan Cook and JT Woods were still on the board at 51, but getting Kelce’s replacement and a higher graded player in Cam Jurgens was the right thing. By their 3rd round pick, only Kerby Joseph (who I really liked) and Nick Cross were still on the board and they again did the right thing with borderline 1st rounder Nakobe Dean still there. I really wanted Lewis Cine but once they traded for A.J. Brown and didn’t have a 1st to move back with, he wasn’t an option. And after that, the available safeties just weren’t the best players available – I can’t question any of their picks.
At this point, the free agent safety market is very thin with either older players or players that probably aren’t better than what the Eagles have. It is a really uninspiring list right now – some names:
- Landon Collins – 54.7 defense grade, 28 years and plays more box safety
- Jaquiski Tartt – 57.5 grade, 30 years old
- Tashaun Gipson – 51.5 grade and almost 32 years old.
- Deshazor Everett – 31.4 grade, 30 years old, and has only played 580 snaps since 2017.
The most interesting names would be the ones on the trade market with Jessie Bates topping the list. He would be expensive – currently on a tag at $12M in 2022, he is looking for a new deal and would be paid at or near the top of the league. The biggest issue with Bates is the price for a safety at that level almost surely includes a 1st round pick and I can’t see the Eagles sending one over without knowing that Hurts is the guy. Chuck Clark is another name linked to the Eagles in trade talks during the draft. Clark would be good depth at worst, but probably isn’t a long-term answer.
After the James Bradberry signing, safety is the only part of the defense that hasn’t been upgraded. But it isn’t worse than last year and there are reasons to be optimistic. Harris will de dependable. But if Epps continues the play he showed late last year and if K’Von can stay on the field and adjust to a two-high (he actually played deep 70% of snaps last year, highest in his pro and college career), the Eagles have a solid safety group. The issues are the depth and that the two players you are hoping to have the upside both haven’t shown anything over a longer period of time.