Why is the safety market so slow?

[SmittyBacall]

When the free agency period began, positions of all sorts were being signed left and right at somewhat ludicrous deals. Yet in a very good safety free agent class, the market has been absolutely ice cold. Morgan Burnett and Kurt Coleman signed reasonable deals, but aside from them and Tyrann Matheiu it’s been slow as molasssa. Average-above average starters Tre Boston, Kenny Vaccaro, and Eric Reid (obvious exception) have fallen to the wayside; players who are conceivably in their prime. Only two weeks AFTER the NFL draft teams have finally shown interest and scheduled visits. Considering this is an era where safeties are crucial for defending against mismatches on offense, I’m curious.

Quote

"Just like a few of the other guys, we’re just not hearing anything near what we want to hear or even close," Boston told co-host Ed McCaffrey and me Thursday on SiriusXM NFL Radio. "We're closer to veteran minimum than we are to the $7-, $8-, $9-million players we wanted to be two months ago or even eight months ago."

Boston has a valid reason for being perplexed.

"It's kind of unbelievable to me," he said. “We’re talking about a position that’s needed more and more on the field in today’s game.

"There are about five or six valuable starting safeties in free agency right now. But I guess it’s just trying to get us to take peanuts like the rest of them have. That’s just the business of the game."

It appears as though they aren’t receiving the offers they thought they would.

Why has the NFL cooled off on the safety class this year? Is it because of a very good safety draft class? Is the position not as valuable as the safeties themselves perceive (thus holdout for more $$$).

What do you think?

 

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.sportingnews.com/us/amp/nfl/news/nfl-safety-free-agents-best-available-tre-boston-eric-reid-kenny-/7mvhjumemrdp1vhe0nptkfg62

[ET80]

7 minutes ago, SmittyBacall said:

What do you think?

Only thing I can think of is teams don't value S over other positions on both sides of the ball. (You kinda saw it in the draft too, with Derwin James falling to the late teens).

Why that would be the case? I don't have the faintest idea, an above average starter at the spot could make or break a defense.

[tom cody]

Hard to know what's going on. To me it's still a valuable position. Maybe it's just a 1-year correction and not something permanent.

[The Gnat]

I wonder if it is somewhat because of coverage needs. I don't know that the safeties out there are the top coverage guys, there is less demand for in the box safeties. That's one thing that I could see, it doesn't make sense why James would drop in the draft for that reason, but I could see that being the reason, or teams looking to turn older CB's or recently drafted closer CB's into safeties.

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

As someone who went from watching Ed Reed to then watching Matt Elam, I can tell you that having quality safeties on your team is monumental to your success. Why NFL teams refuse to value Safeties, I have no idea.

[Soko]

27 minutes ago, The Gnat said:

I wonder if it is somewhat because of coverage needs. I don't know that the safeties out there are the top coverage guys, there is less demand for in the box safeties. That's one thing that I could see, it doesn't make sense why James would drop in the draft for that reason, but I could see that being the reason, or teams looking to turn older CB's or recently drafted closer CB's into safeties.

Anything’s possible, but I don’t know. Tre Boston is coming off his best season and he’s more of a deep FS kind of guy. Reid - while obviously dealing with other issues that may or may not be keeping him unemployed - is a versatile player that has shown ability as a true safety and also as a guy closer to the LOS. Vacarro had the roughest season of the 3, but he’s a physical DB that occasionally manned up on tight ends and could play joker. Derwin James is obviously a stud in coverage and near the LOS. A guy like Justin Reid fell all the way to third after flirting as a late first rounder. 

I don’t doubt that the league wants cover guys more so than pure hitters like Whitner or Addae, but the group of safeties in question aren’t really that. It really is a mystery. 

What I assume is that teams are okay with so-so safety play that comes cheap. They’re less valuable than defensive linemen, corners, and #1 LBs, so I could see teams over prioritizing those positions over safety play. 

Even though it’s odd to see the market this cool, it’s nice not seeing a bunch of solid or good players blowing the roof off the asking prices.

[MKnight82]

34 minutes ago, Darth Pees said:

As someone who went from watching Ed Reed to then watching Matt Elam, I can tell you that having quality safeties on your team is monumental to your success. Why NFL teams refuse to value Safeties, I have no idea.

The guys who haven’t been signed aren’t Ed Reed.

Safeties are the RBs of the defense.  If you have an elite one great, otherwise it’s more cost effective to play guys on their rookie contracts.  Most safeties just don’t impact the game enough to warrant a second contract.

[BullsandBroncos]

1 hour ago, Darth Pees said:

As someone who went from watching Ed Reed to then watching Matt Elam, I can tell you that having quality safeties on your team is monumental to your success. Why NFL teams refuse to value Safeties, I have no idea.

Agreed having Darian Stewart and TJ Ward in the SB helped tremendously. Back towards the end of the 2000s after John Lynch left us, our safety play was absolutely atrocious. Marquand Manuel and Marlon McCree gross

[43M]

5 hours ago, Darth Pees said:

As someone who went from watching Ed Reed to then watching Matt Elam, I can tell you that having quality safeties on your team is monumental to your success. Why NFL teams refuse to value Safeties, I have no idea.

I don't necessarily think teams don't value safety, as much as I think safety is a very hard position to find quality players at these days. In particular, there are very few good coverage safeties coming out of college. Most are enforcers and run support safeties. 

In terms of why these particular free agent safeties aren't signed, I'm not sure... Except for maybe Eric Reid.

[Kiwibrown]

I wonder if SS is one of the easier positions to play on defense. 

run support and cover the 3-4th option on the play.

when it comes to players like Ed, there really haven't been many of his quality. IMO he is the best ever FS and the only one in his league. 

[Tugboat]

I think it mostly comes down to the fact that you can sorta lump most safeties into one of 3 categories:  1)Pro Bowl caliber impact defenders, 2)Decent starter, 3)Liability.

As long as you aren't looking at starting a guy who falls into category 3, it's hard to justify spending much on anyone who doesn't fall into category 1 at the position.  There are only so many guys who are truly impact players worthy of bigtime deals at the position.  There are a lot of guys who can be decent or serviceable at the position.  And there were a lot of options out there this year in particular...with a lot of veteran FAs, and quite a few solid prospects in the draft as well.

It's also compounded by how scheme specific a position it can be.  Not just in FS vs SS, but in exactly what a team wants to do with each of those positions as well.  I think teams are quick to remember how disappointingly the whole Jarius Byrd thing went, for instance...cashing in and moving to a new system where he didn't look like nearly the same player.  As well as just in the reality that in certain schemes...a FS can be little more than a "safety net", and a SS in some schemes is little more than a glorified 4th LBer.  Not the most premium roles, and can be more dependent than most on the caliber of players around them.

For instance...the Jaguars had arguably the best secondary in the game last year.  Gipson as a safety had looked extremely mediocre and was labeled by many as yet another "Jaguars big money FA bust".  With some scheme tweaks, the right SS beside him, and Jalen and Bouye around him...suddenly Gipson looked like a Pro Bowl caliber FS again.  Like magic.  It's largely a support position...and hard to mask other weaknesses from that spot, in many schemes.  When you're talking about "average" Safeties, you're probably going to get as much impact out of just spending extra money on a defensive front or starting corner, rather than marginal upgrades to different degrees of mediocre safety play.

 

Plus...probably some guys getting a bit too high on their own value as players.  Teams obviously understood that they could afford to play hardball and wait it out...and still probably land themselves a serviceable player at the position, either in the draft or FA.  I think it's the opposite of what happened with WR...where teams got a little bit crazy trigger happy on the top handful of guys, with a weak top-end to the draft class.

[Kiltman]

I think it's just an overabundance...every year now we get a bunch of versatile safeties to come out, many of they guys do a lot of things well but aren't usually elite in any particular category.

So if I'm a GM with limited resources, why invest more than I have to in a guy I can more or less replace in the draft...for like 1/6th to 1/10th of the pay these vets are looking for.

Add to that that other teams are feeling the same we get this dead market, almost all of these guys will take one year deals for cheap to be with a contender, or get a little more cash from the bottom of the league. They'll hit next year, with even worse results. As more guys get added to the FA and Draft pools.

Right now it's just ego and them wanting to not jump too early. 
I expect a lot of them to wait until camps start and see if a huge need opens up somewhere.

[Ronnie's Pinky]

On 5/15/2018 at 3:15 PM, Kiwibrown said:

I wonder if SS is one of the easier positions to play on defense. 

run support and cover the 3-4th option on the play.

when it comes to players like Ed, there really haven't been many of his quality. IMO he is the best ever FS and the only one in his league. 

Guy in my avatar was better.

[GSUeagles14]

On 5/15/2018 at 11:41 AM, MKnight82 said:

The guys who haven’t been signed aren’t Ed Reed.

Safeties are the RBs of the defense.  If you have an elite one great, otherwise it’s more cost effective to play guys on their rookie contracts.  Most safeties just don’t impact the game enough to warrant a second contract.

what exactly is this based off of? the way teams are passing, you need safeties who can cove, just because something doesnt show up in the box score doesnt mean it doesnt affect the game. We're seeing off ball, undersized lbs who can cover more valued than maybe ever, and thinking applied to those guys 5-6 years ago.

[Scout]

Safeties are dime a dozen. I don't think there any in the league currently that truly change a game.