Is Safety Becoming Most Important Position on Defense?

Steeler Safety Troy Polamalu

You only need to look at one regular season series to see how important the safety position is becoming, the Jets and Patriots.  Although the Patriots were a different team in both games as they still had Randy Moss in their week 2 matchup, it is still safe to make this comparison.   During their first matchup the Patriots were able to muster only 14 points with both touchdowns coming in the first half, the second one a long touchdown pass from Brady to Moss with Revis in coverage.  Darrelle Revis would pull his hamstring on that play and not return for the second half.  Revis, in my opinion is the best corner in the game hands down yet the Jets were able to hold the top scoring offense in the league scoreless in the second half without the best corner.  Let us now go to their second matchup where Jim Leonhard, the Jets starting safety, broke his leg during practice late in the week and the Jets were thrashed 45-3.  During that debace, the Jets defense looked clueless and had no idea who was covering who on many of the plays and there was mass confusion.  Now by no means am I saying that I would rather have Jim Leonhard than Darrelle Revis, but does the safety lead to better overall team defense?  A shutdown corner can erase a wide receiver from a game, but the offense can still throw away from him and a cornerback does not really affect the run game as much.  It is tough to avoid a great safety though.

We need only look at the instant boost the Steelers defense gets when Troy Polamalu gets back on the field after one of his many injuries.  Even though the Steelers missed the playoffs last season, they were missing Polamalu for most of those losses and I was in the minority stating that had they made the playoffs they were my favorite to win the super bowl as the team is entirely different when he is on the field.  Ed Reed missed around half this season and he was still able to lead the NFL in interceptions and made the Ravens a much better difference (I don't think they are great, but still good).  The third true game changing safety, nobody even remembers because he is never on the field, is Bob Sanders of the Indianapolis colts.  They have a defense that is actually talked about when he is healthy, instead of dissecting how Peyton Manning can beat you because that is usually their only chance of winning.  The main reason that this idea probably isn't thought about as much, is that you can find more good safeties than you can cornerbacks.  It is a lot tougher to play out on an island than in the middle of the field where you don't always have one true responsibility.  I also think that good cornerbacks should be paid more and are much harder to find, but the great safeties alter the games outcome much more.

In my opinion, there is nobody better than Polamalu with Ed Reed coming in second.  Eric Berry of the KC Chiefs has the making of a great safety and will climb the ladder fairly quickly and I feel that Earl Thomas of the Seattle Seahawks will not be a great one but a very good one.  There are also many good ones in the league, but for this article we are talking about true game changers.  I like Brandon Merriweather of the Patriots, but I wouldn't consider him a game changer.  Bill Belichick has also made a living of making bad safeties look good and good safeties look great.  There is a long list of them, I consider Lawyer Milloy to be good where he looked great here.  Tebucky Jones was very good here and terrible everywhere else.  Rodney Harrison was very good where he looked great here.  The Patriots been able to plug in a bunch of random guys and get good production out of them, but none of them have been game changers, which is the point of this article.  More than any position on the defense I am beginning to think if you have a game changer at safety that instantly makes you a good defense and sometimes great.