After quarterback, running back, fullback, wide receiver, tight end, offensive tackle, guard,center, defensive line, outside linebacker, inside linebacker, and cornerback, the penultimate stop on our position by position trip around the Tennessee Titans as we approach the 2015 regular season is a look at the safeties.
In the offseason positional analysis, one of the questions I focused on was what the safeties would look like in a Dick LeBeau defense without Troy Polamalu. We’re still waiting to see just what the Titans will do in the regular season. But we do know the Titans were lining up in the offseason with interchangeable safeties, and this preseason we’ve seen both starting safeties both lined up close to the line of scrimmage and deep off the ball at various times. I’m far from sold we’ll actually see interchangeable safeties given the likely relative strengths of each player, but it does seem likely the Titans will not adhere strictly to a sharp distinction into strong and free safeties this year. (For the record, the unofficial team-released depth chart lists them as strong and free safeties, as it has since at least 2009.)
When it comes to veteran mainstays like Michael Griffin, I rarely find myself with much to add to an already well-established book on him. He’s more of a prototype free safety, though he lacks the top-level instincts the elite players at the position have. The only time we’ve seen him play a lot of strong safety came early in 2012; it didn’t go well, and the experiment ended after a couple weeks. His past level of performance has seemed to vary directly with the quality of the players around him in the secondary and his comfort with his role. Given the questions at cornerback and the new partner he’s getting, that could lead to some uncomfortable moments. As I wrote in the offseason, though, I thought he persevered well through adverse circumstances, including a shoulder injury he now seems to be recovered from, last year. Now 30 (31 in January), he’s at the age where physical decline tends to start to overtake the benefit of experience and is thus worth evaluating on a year-to-year basis. But on the whole my expectations are for the same mix of solid play and plays you would’ve liked to see a player with his first-round pedigree and contract to make, resulting in at least two tweets from me expressing my exasperation with a missed tackle (a team-high 17 per Football Outsiders Almanac 2015, though Coty Sensabaugh had a much worse broken tackle rate).
You know who did not have a lot of broken tackles last year? The new starter next to Griffin, Da’Norris Searcy. Per FO charting (I write for FO perma-disclaimer), he had the second-lowest broken tackle rate in 2014 of any defensive back with at least 40 tackles, behind only new teammate Jason McCourty. The press of other obligations this offseason meant I never get to the in-depth watching of Searcy I mentioned in the offseason positional analysis. His usage in Buffalo, where he spent the first four years of his career, suggests a player definitely in the strong safety mold. He was a part-time player in 2013, often playing in the box in sub package as a dime linebacker, while his technical ascent to a starter in 2014 did not result in more playing time as a whole. FO charting has him with a respectable performance in 2013 and very few targets for a “13-game starter” in 2014.
Ray Horton described him in the offseason as a playmaker at Buffalo who has taken on leadership role, soaks things up, and wants to get better. He had 2.5 sacks in 2013 in Mike Pettine’s defense, 0.5 last year under Jim Schwartz. He’s looked solid enough in the preseason, and we’ll see what the regular season brings.
Marqueston Huff is Griffin’s backup at free safety and lined up next to Searcy in the offseason when Griffin was rehabbing his shoulder. He’s also played some outside corner in the preseason of late, after playing some in the slot last year in dime packages. As I said in my third preseason game review, I am ready to move on from the “Huff as a corner” experience, though of course Ruston Webster, Ken Whisenhunt, Dick LeBeau, and Horton will run their own damn team how they see fit without consulting me to see if I approve. He did respectably enough in his slot coverage snaps last year, though of course not standing out on last year’s team just meant that he wasn’t obviously terrible.
Daimion Stafford is Searcy’s backup at strong safety. We saw him last year as a dime safety late in the season. He’s been a prominent player in the preseason the last couple years, mostly because he likes to come up and hit people. Sometimes, he succeeds. I was higher on his performance the third preseason game after the rewatch than I was live, but that does not mean I’m nearly as comfortable with him as I am with Searcy, or as I was with George Wilson’s ability to step in and provide respectable play last year. If he does have to play a lot in a “base” defense, I’d expect him to play a lot of strong safety and Griffin to play a lot of free safety, or at least I wouldn’t want to rely on Stafford as a deep safety. His primary job this year should be as a straight backup and core special teams player.
My normal rule of thumb is players added after the start of training camp are mostly just fodder, but Josh Aubrey looked solid on defense and special teams the first two preseason games before missing the contest against the Chiefs, so much so that I kept him on my latest 53-man roster prediction (already wrong with the release of Fernando Velasco!). I may have been a bit too high on him, or at least too heavily influenced by LeBeau’s pattern of keeping ten defensive backs around. He’s listed behind Searcy and Stafford on the safety depth chart, so his role if he sticks around would be as a depth player and special teamer only. You need quality special teamers in the NFL. You really need quality special teamers if your special teams units were mostly lousy, like the Titans were last year (but that’s tomorrow’s positional analysis). If the Titans like Aubrey there, they could find a spot for him.
Khalid Wooten came out of Nevada as a safety-corner hybrid type, but the Titans have played him just as a safety and never on the outside of late. Heading into his third season since the Titans took him in the sixth round, I thought he might have found a spot on the team this year with that need for more defensive backs. But I haven’t seen him flash this preseason and would guess they keep Aubrey over him if there’s a job for a fifth safety.
Like Huff and Wooten, Jemea Thomas is listed on the roster as a “DB” rather than “CB” or “S.” Unlike them, he has played exclusively cornerback, at least in games and that I’ve noticed. Undrafted free agent Cody Prewitt got hurt early in training camp, was sent to injured reserve, and the Titans reached a quick injury settlement with him; if they liked him, I suspect they would have handled him differently.
Conclusion-Type Things
There’s still a top-level question about a Dick LeBeau defense featuring something other than Troy Polamalu and Not Troy Polamalu. The Titans seem to be set with two starters, neither of whom I’m expecting to be great but both of whom have a good chance to be decent starters (in today’s NFL, “only a quarter of the fanbase wants Player X benched immediately” is enough to be a decent starter). Depth is, well, better than it is at other positions but probably not where it was last year when there was a third player with experience you could feel confident could step in on a week’s notice and perform acceptably (or better).
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