As a safety net, take instinct over speed
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Dan Pompei /
Posted: 4 days ago




If you want to move Georgia safety and projected first-round draft choice Thomas Davis to outside linebacker, be my guest. But don\'t do it because he ran a 4.65 40-yard dash at the NFL Scouting Combine.

Safeties can make up for whatever they lack in timed speed, probably better than players at any other position. In fact, a slower safety might get to the ball more quickly than a faster one -- if he has a feel for angles, his opponent, the offensive play and the defensive call. It\'s all about \"mental speed,\" as scouts call it.


Look at UCLA safety Ben Emanuel. He ran a 4.56 40, which didn\'t exactly char the AstroTurf in the RCA Dome during the Combine. But he gets to where he needs to be consistently because his play is elevated by instinct. \"Some people see differently than others,\" Steelers defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau says. \"Those type of individuals tend to perform beyond their statistical data. There are a lot of different angles and visual cues they\'re getting every time they snap the ball. It\'s a stimulus response, and some people just do it better than others.\"


Of course, the team that takes Emanuel shouldn\'t ask him to play man-to-man against Marvin Harrison. Emanuel would be best as a strong safety who plays near the line. \"I don\'t want to see a safety run 5 flat, but the reality is there are 5-flat safeties in our league who play OK,\" Lions president Matt Millen says. \"You just have to know where to put them, how to play them.\"


Davis, a violent hitter who shows no regard for his body, will be an outstanding run stuffer. But he is a sucker for play-action and gets caught peeking into the backfield. He is as lost in a zone as a hillbilly in Manhattan. \"He\'s made more mental mistakes and instinctive mistakes than anyone I\'ve ever scouted,\" says one executive who has been in the business for nearly a quarter-century.


When he came out of Stanford, John Lynch ran a 4.64 40. When he came out of Syracuse, Tebucky Jones ran a 4.40 40. But Lynch is a future Hall of Famer and Jones is a middle-of-the-road performer because Lynch feels the game the way Ray Charles felt the music and Jones doesn\'t. Jones could beat Lynch on a track all day long, but he probably wouldn\'t beat him to the football twice in 100 snaps. Players such as Lynch who lack top-end speed often have superior body control.


Yet these safeties are widely considered \"flawed,\" and their draft stocks tend to slip. Twenty-one of the 64 starting safeties in the NFL last season were not first-day draft picks. Mike Green, a three-year starter for the Bears, was Mr. Irrelevant -- the last pick in the 2000 draft. Rodney Harrison, one of the best safeties of this generation, was a fifth-round pick.


In recent years, more has been demanded of safeties from a coverage standpoint as offenses have learned to isolate and attack them with fleet tight ends and shifty receivers. Titans coach Jeff Fisher says teams are looking for more athletic, faster safeties these days. That\'s why we\'ve seen an increase in the number of cornerback-safety \'tweeners playing safety, such as Minnesota\'s Corey Chavous, New England\'s Eugene Wilson and Tampa Bay\'s Dwight Smith.


But instincts can help safeties in coverage as much as speed. \"With the way the tight end position has evolved, tight ends are like receivers, so the safety position requires being able to play in space, being able to understand what\'s going on around you,\" Steelers coach Bill Cowher says. \"It\'s not just running straight ahead. You better have a feel for the running game, a feel for the passing game.\"


If you can acquire a safety who has both speed and instinct, like Cowher has in Troy Polamalu, you are living a dream. If you have to choose, bet on instinct.


Senior writer Dan Pompei covers the NFL for Sporting News. Email him at pompei@sportingnews.com.