A safety in American football is an important and versatile position on the football field. As its name states, safety is the defense’s last line of defense. The safety’s job is to make sure no offensive players run or catch a touchdown.

What is the difference between a cornerback and a safety?

Defensive back Position in American football and Canadian football A diagram of a standard set. The defensive backs include two (labeled CB on the diagram), a (labeled FS) and a (labeled SS). In, defensive backs (DBs), also called the secondary, are the players on the defensive side of the ball who play farthest back from the line of scrimmage.

They are distinguished from the other two sets of defensive players, the who play directly on the line of scrimmage, and the, who play in the middle of the defense, between the defensive line and the defensive backs. Among the defensive backs, there are two main types,, which play nearer the line of scrimmage and the sideline, whose main role is to cover the opposing team’s, and the, who play further back near the center of the field, and who act as the last line of defense.

American defensive formations usually includes two of each, a left and right cornerback, as well as a and a, with the free safety tending to play further back than the strong safety. In, which has twelve players on the field compared to the eleven of, there is an additional position called, which plays like a hybrid between a linebacker and cornerback.

1. Canadian formations include two cornerbacks, two halfbacks and one safety, for a total of five defensive backs.
2. Defensive back jumps for the ball with wide receiver Besides the standard set of defensive backs, teams may also remove a defensive lineman or a linebacker and replace them with an additional defensive back.

The fifth defensive back is commonly called the (so named because a five-cent coin in the U.S. and Canada is called a ). By extension, a sixth defensive back is called a (because the next value coin in the U.S. and Canada is called a ). Rarely, teams may employ seven or even eight defensive backs.

Is a safety worth it in football?

Along with scoring a touchdown or successfully kicking a field goal, another way for teams to score in football is through a safety, While safeties are much less common than touchdowns and field goals, it’s important to know how they can change the outcome of a game. Most commonly, a safety occurs when the ball carrier is tackled or goes out of bounds in their own end zone after carrying the ball into the end zone. If the line of scrimmage is on a team’s own one-yard line, and the quarterback is sacked in the end zone, a safety occurs.

Are safeties rare in football?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Buffalo Bills quarterback J.P. Losman is tackled by New England Patriots defensive lineman Ty Warren, Because Losman was tackled behind his own goal line, this play resulted in a safety for New England. In gridiron football, the safety ( American football ) or safety touch ( Canadian football ) is a scoring play that results in two points being awarded to the scoring team.

1. Safeties can be scored in a number of ways, such as when a ball carrier is tackled in his own end zone or when a foul is committed by the offense in their own end zone.
2. After a safety is scored in American football, the ball is kicked off to the team that scored the safety from the 20-yard line; in Canadian football, the scoring team also has the options of taking control of the ball at their own 35-yard line or kicking off the ball, also at their own 35-yard line.

The ability of the scoring team to receive the ball through a kickoff differs from the touchdown and field goal, which require the scoring team to kick the ball off to the scored upon team. Despite being of relatively low point value, safeties can have a significant impact on the result of games, and Brian Burke of Advanced NFL Stats estimated that safeties have a greater abstract value than field goals, despite being worth a point less, due to the field position and reclaimed possession gained off the safety kick.

1. Safeties are the least common method of scoring in American football but are not rare occurrences – a safety has occurred around once every 14 games in the history of the National Football League (NFL), or about once a week under current scheduling rules.
2. A much rarer occurrence is the one-point (or conversion) safety, which can be scored by the offense on an extra point or two-point conversion attempt: these have occurred at least twice in NCAA Division I football since 1996, most recently at the 2013 Fiesta Bowl, though no conversion safeties have occurred since 1940 in the NFL.

A conversion safety by the defense is also possible, though highly unlikely. Although this has never occurred, it is the only possible way a team could finish with a single point in an American football game.

Is safety easy in football?

The safety position is one of the most challenging and complex in all of football. These guys have to do it all: Cover the pass deep, come up close to the line to play the run, and many times cover an athletic player one on one in man coverage. Defensive coordinators ask a lot from their safeties, so let’s talk about what the safety position is, what their role is on defense, and who are some of the best of all time.

Is safety easier than corner?

Am I A Safety or a Corner? So you are young in the game of football or perhaps your coach has moved your over to the dark side (aka defense). Perhaps you have been contemplating a move to the side of the ball where aggression is not frowned upon (also known as defense). Your athletic traits say you should play in the secondary but where exactly? This article will help you answer that question.

• I know what you are thinking.
• You are thinking this article is going to be about what physical traits matchup with each position. Wrong.
• There are plenty of articles and videos out there about that topic written by amateurs and professionals alike.
• What my experience as a coach has taught me is that whether you are a safety or a corner really has more to do with your mentality.

What part of the game and in particular playing defense, really lights your fire. When you have figured that out as a player, you will likely make all the other things work. There have been cornerbacks that have thrived at the position when they did not have the ideal speed or size.

Likewise for safeties. What I have noticed for those guys has been an undying passion for what it is they do. This is why I say that where your heart lies is where your feet should also. With that being the case what are those mental attributes you need to examine to determine whether you are a corner or a safety? (1) Do You Love to Tackle? Notice I didn’t ask if you if you like to tackle.

I asked you if you love it. If you love tackling then most likely you are a safety. Yes, when playing defense, everybody has to want to tackle but when it comes down to loving it, that’s not most cornerbacks but it’s most likely most safeties. When that 200+ lb.

1. Back comes roaring through the gap that the linebacker failed to fill, it’s the safety who has to be there to get him on the ground and give the defense another chance.
2. To do that, it’s best that you love tackling.
3. When wide receivers are feeling real comfortable running across the middle, is your instinct to want to jump in front of them to bat the ball down or lower your shoulder into their ribs so they are less enthusiastic about bending a route into the middle of the field? If your answer is the latter, you might be a safety.

(2) Do you Love 1-on-1 Match-ups? If the part of the game that excites you is lining up against another man play after play and keeping his hands off of the football then you might be a cornerback. Some guys just love the feeling that gives them. Some guys just thoroughly enjoy studying a guy’s every move and foiling his plans come game day.

If that’s you then corner may be where your passions will meet it’s purpose. At safety you aren’t often put in that situation. There may be times where you are called upon to match-up on a tight end all game because he’s a menace but by and large you are taking a view of the whole offensive unit and must divide your focus not only between a set of wide receivers and the quarterback but the other team’s ground game as well.

Following around a guy like you are on a FBI sting typically is a job for a cornerback. (3) Do You Love X’s and O’s? If you play for me, everyone has to get in their playbook and study film. However, just because I or a coach makes you do it, doesn’t mean you will love it.

• If studying playbooks and opposing offenses brings you immense joy then you might be a safety.
• As I stated in the paragraph above, safeties are responsible for dissecting an entire offense.
• Everything from the split of the wide receivers to the alignment of the offensive line gives you clues about what is to come.

From your position directly in front of the offense, you can observe all of those things and plan accordingly. Safeties typically have one of the highest football IQs on the defense. Cornerbacks typically just want to know what the coverage is and go about their business.

4) Do You Love Running? On good defenses, everybody runs but nobody does more running than a cornerback. This is especially so if your team is running a heavy press man scheme. Press man means that you are running no matter what. It can be a fullback dive and that miserable back up wide receiver is going to sell you on that go route that’s not coming.

Loving running doesn’t mean you have to be a track star. It simply means that you don’t mind doing it play after play. For cornerbacks, there’s also nothing like that run play to the opposite side of the field that you have to go run down followed by a trip to the huddle to hear the call “Cover 1” come in for the next play.

1. When that happens, you better love running because that’s what you will be doing.
2. Being a safety doesn’t mean you won’t run.
3. It doesn’t mean you don’t like to run but it does mean that you will do less of it than a corner.
4. From your position, often in the middle of the field, you are closer to the action.

You are also often looking in at the play and can throttle it down when the back is stopped cold at the line of scrimmage. A corner in man coverage does not have that luxury. I will say this, if you don’t like running, do not, I repeat, do not play corner.

(5) Do You Love Communicating? When I say communicating I am not talking about talking trash. I mean do you like relaying information to others from things you observe. One of the stark differences between corners and safeties is this component. By and large cornerbacks find it hard to communicate formations, movements, etc.

as they like to be locked in on the man or men that are lined up fairly close to them. Safeties, on the other hand, typically like seeing the formations, alignments, motions, etc. and communicating to the rest of the defense. Safeties are in the advantageous position of being directly in front of the offense and yards back where they can see the total picture.

Being able to communicate what they are seeing is vital to a defenses’ ability to stop a play. If you enjoy this part of the game then you are more of a safety than you are a corner. (6) Do You Love Technique? As I have stated with each of these questions, they are all important to every position in the secondary.

However, whether or not you love it will determine where you might excel playing defensive back. If having perfect technique is something that you strive for then you might be a cornerback. Cornerback is a more technical position than is safety. When you are lined up in front of a wide receiver playing man to man as corners often are then it’s basically a battle of techniques.

• A slip in your form for even a second and you can find yourself on the wrong side of a long touchdown pass.
• On the flip side, a safety with strong technique will excel but things aren’t as urgent for them where technique is concerned.
• An extra step in making a turn or a delay in reacting to a move by the offense and there is time to make it up.

That is less so for the guys on the edges playing closer to the wide outs. If being obsessed about where your eyes are, what your feet are doing and where your hands are placed is what drives you to play the game then you might be a cornerback. There you have it.

As I have said before in posts on this website, 80% of this game is mental. So with that in mind, whether or not you are a safety or a corner has more to do with your mental approach as opposed to your physical traits. When you love something, you will be surprised at the lengths you will go to in making it happen.

If you can truly answer yes to all of the questions I asked in this article then congratulations you are either an A1 player or on your way to being an A1 player that can line up at safety or corner. Now you can start taking assessment of what your physical traits may be and how they matchup with the duties of either position.

• Author: Chad Wilson is the owner of All Eyes DB Camp and author of “”.
• He played college football at the University of Miami and briefly in the NFL for the Seattle Seahawks.
• Over his 15 year high school football coaching career, he tutored over a dozen Division I defensive backs and as a trainer has worked with NFL All Pros, first round draft picks, college football All Americans and Top 10 ranked high school football prospects.

: Am I A Safety or a Corner?

Do safeties get the ball?

Safety Kick – Once a safety is awarded to the defense for getting tackled or fumbling the ball out of their end zone, the defense will be awarded 2 points. They also will be awarded possession. This means that the offense will need to kick or punt the football to the opposing team.

Are strong safeties bigger than cornerbacks?

A safety in American football is an important and versatile position on the football field. As its name states, safety is the defense’s last line of defense. The safety’s job is to make sure no offensive players run or catch a touchdown. They are often the deepest player on the defense. This article will show you what the safety position does in football and the variations of safety. Best Course To Learn Football

Instantly improve your football IQGrow your football knowledge & outsmart your friends and colleaguesA complete breakdown of rules, offensive and defensive concepts

In the spread offense era, the safety position is arguably one of the most important positions in football. The safety’s role on defense is to make sure no big plays happen. Big players are often plays of 20+ yards or more. If the offense can have a big play (otherwise known as impact plays), there’s a high percentage chance of scoring a field goal or a touchdown.

The physical build of a safety is often bigger than that of a cornerback but smaller than a linebacker. The safety position must utilize both tremendous speeds as well as athletism. NFL safeties such as Ed Reed and Troy Polamumnu are great examples of players covering the pass and run-down running backs that happen to gain big yards.

Slow safeties are not ideal for the last line of defense. The perfect example of this was when Rob Gronkowski tried to tackle Miami Dolphins, running back Kenyon Drake for a touchdown on the game’s last play. Long before football was a finesse game, teams could pack as many big and strong players onto the field as possible.

These players could man-handle the offense to their advantage. The invention of the forward pass changed all of that. Teams no longer tried to win with pure power but rather speed. Offenses spread out and used throwing the football down the field as the primary offensive strategy. As football teams started to throw the ball downfield, defenses needed to match this aerial attack by adding speed to the field.

This is how the safety position in modern-day football was born. These safety positions are split into two types of safeties used most commonly.

How common are safeties?

This season of the NFL could be the strangest since World War II, when NFL rosters were so heavily depleted that in 1943 the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles played as a single squad, the ” Pittsburgh-Philadelphia Steagles,” The COVID-19 pandemic may push back the start of the season or cancel it altogether — and even when NFL football returns, big changes to the game will soon follow: an extra regular-season game, expanded and restructured playoffs and bigger rosters. So maybe now is the perfect time to look at other NFL rules that we could change. Scoring in football has always seemed arbitrary, but one scoring play in particular takes the cake: The safety is the rarest, most difficult scoring play in the game. So why is it worth only 2 points? Defensive touchdowns are far more common than safeties. There were 65 defensive touchdowns in 2019, but there were just 14 safeties forced on an offensive play. NFL placekickers made more than four out of every five field goals they tried — yet each of those 802 successful field-goal attempts was worth more than any safety. As Alex Kirshner of SBNation’s Banner Society recently pointed out, Walter Camp’s foundational 1893 rulebook assigned 2 points to a safety without any real rationale. Unlike just about every other football rule (including the point values of touchdowns and field goals), the point value of a safety hasn’t been touched in the intervening 127 years. Kirshner argued that because harder, rarer sports feats are usually awarded more points, the safety should be worth a whopping 11. As the old saw goes, “The most damaging phrase in the English language is ‘we’ve always done it that way.'” 1 So setting Camp’s best first guess aside, how many points should a safety be worth? First, we have to account for a key part of the safety’s value: the scoring team being awarded not just points but also possession of the ball. In the NFL, a safety free kick is set up from the kicking team’s 20-yard line, and the kicker can’t use a tee. In theory, this should give the safety-scoring team great field position. But in practice, that hasn’t been the case. Over the past five seasons, the average spot of the ball after a safety kick has been the scoring team’s own 36-yard line — less than 8 yards closer to the end zone than an average starting drive, So if a safety kick is worth roughly the same as any possession, we can include that point total in a new safety valuation. As Kushner pointed out, the average drive is worth about 2.1 points, so we can say that “2 points and the ball” is roughly 4.1 points. To make sure our new safety value is worth at least what the old one was, we’ll round up to 5 points. I tracked the change in win probability following safeties scored on an offensive play from scrimmage over the past two years. The highest-leverage safety came in Week 15, when New York Giants cornerback Sam Beal tackled Miami Dolphins tailback Patrick Laird in the end zone, expanding a 14-13 Giants lead to 16-13, That swung the Giants’ chance of winning from 63 percent to 81.4 percent, and they went on to win 36-20. Interestingly, that was one of the rare cases where getting the ball back did outweigh an extra three points. For the Giants, going up 19-13 and kicking off wouldn’t have been as advantageous as going up 16-13 and getting the ball back. 2 Most safeties didn’t impact the game nearly as much. In fact, the average safety gave the scoring team a 7.1 percentage-point boost in win probability — and in almost every case, getting more points would have had more impact than getting the ball back. If a drive is worth about 2 expected points, and a safety is worth 2 actual points, making the safety worth 5 points and giving the ball back should still slightly favor the scoring team. According to Pro-Football-Reference.com’s win-probability calculator, that’s how it works out: While a 2-points-and-the-ball safety boosted win probability by 7.1 percentage points, a 5-points-and-give-the-ball-back safety raised it by 9.7 percentage points. On seven of the 21 safeties in 2018 and 2019, if the play had been worth 5 points and the ball went back to the team surrendering the safety, the change in win probability would have been less than 1 percentage point — usually because the game was all but won when the safety occurred. Of the 14 where the higher point-value and possession change would have made a bigger difference than 1 percentage point, 13 gave the advantage to the 5-point method — but only five of those 13 would have moved the win-probability needle by more than 4 percentage points over a traditional safety. So to give safeties significantly more oomph than they currently do, they have to be worth significantly more than 5 points. Here’s the average increase in win probability for 5-, 7-, 11- and 15-point safeties over the past two seasons:

Has football game ever been won by a safety?

Overtime walkoff safeties – Under the original NFL overtime rules in 1974, any score by either team in overtime would win the game (“sudden death” for the loser). The rules were modified in 2012: the first team to possess the ball in overtime wins immediately if they score a touchdown, and the team that kicks off to them at the beginning of overtime wins immediately if they score a safety.

• Minnesota Vikings 23, Los Angeles Rams 21 (November 5, 1989)
• Chicago Bears 19, Tennessee Titans 17 (November 14, 2004)
• Miami Dolphins 22, Cincinnati Bengals 20 (November 1, 2013)

On September 8, 2002, an overtime safety nearly occurred in a matchup between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New Orleans Saints. Late in overtime, Tampa Bay was pinned back at their own 5-yard line. Tom Tupa attempted to punt on 4th down from the endzone, but Saints defender Fred McAfee was unblocked.

How many safeties play at once?

Mortiz/Wikimedia By Jobe Lewis Updated on 04/24/18 There are two ‘safety’ positions on the defense in the game of football. Sometimes their jobs overlap, but many times they are assigned very distinct roles in the defense.

What is the safest job in football?

What is the safest position in football? – The safest positions in football are undoubtedly the kicker and punter. Each of these positions is protected by extensive rules regarding opposing players tackling, or even making contact, with them. This means you will almost never see kickers or punters take big hits, and when they do, it is because the opposition performed a highly illegal act.

Who is the greatest safety in football history?

1. Ed Reed – Teams : Ravens 2002-2012, Texans 2013, Jets 2013 Pro Bowl honors : 9 Super Bowl titles : 1 The only player who could beat Lott for greatest safety of all time is a man known to frustrate arguably the greatest quarterback of all time, Tom Brady.

According to Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, when playing against Ed Reed, he and Brady agreed, “You’ve got to know where Ed Reed is on the field every time the ball is snapped.” If you didn’t know where Reed was on the field, it would cost you. The nine-time Pro Bowler and five-time first-team All-Pro intercepted 64 passes (seventh-most in NFL history) and set the record for interception return yards (1,590).

In 2004, 2008, and 2010, he ranked first in interceptions, and he recorded nine defensive touchdowns. The Hall of Famer is also the first to return an interception, punt, blocked punt, and fumble for a score. He earned Defensive Player of the Year in 2004 and a Super Bowl with the Ravens in 2013.

Who has the most career safeties?

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Is football the hardest sport to learn?

What Is The Hardest Sport In The World? 11 Super Tough Sports By nature, athletes are competitive people. That drive to be the best is what helps them push through challenges in training and during competitions. The competitive nature of athletes doesn’t always just begin and end with just the other athletes (and themselves) in their own sport; athletes also often want to compete with others outside of their,

One way they may scratch this never-ending competitive itch is to try and argue that their sport is the, comparing or “competing” in a theoretical head-to-head battle of their sport versus those of their friends or all other sports in general. Some athletes will argue, “Football is the hardest sport,” while others will fire back with, “Hockey is much harder!” But what is the hardest sport? Is it boxing or MMA fighting? Or perhaps you have endurance athletes who might attest that the is the most demanding sport.

Where does the truth lie? What is the hardest sport in the world? What are the toughest sports overall? In this guide, we will try to settle the debate, answering the question: What is the hardest sport in the world? We’re going to cover:

What Is the Hardest Sport In the World?

Let’s get started!

• Athletes and sports enthusiasts alike have long attempted to rank sports based on their difficulty in an attempt to crown one sport as the hardest in the world.
• What makes one sport tougher than another?
• Although different people or sports organizations may use alternative criteria or a different working definition of “difficulty” as it pertains to a sporting endeavor, usually, sports that are harder require more energy, power, level of fitness, strength, endurance, body involvement, and skill.
• As can be seen, it becomes extremely challenging to rank the difficulty of sports because there are so many factors to consider simultaneously.
• Even sites that try to take a scientific approach—assigning a numerical score for each factor for each sport and then ranking them based on their composite scores—is really just a glorified subjective assessment masquerading as an objective science.
• After all, assigning a number for how much “skill” is required for water polo or how much “endurance” is required for soccer is subjective, especially when you consider different positions and even the fact that there are additional factors you could also probably include in the rating system.

1. With that said, these types of organized approaches that make as much of a scientific approach as possible by trying to quantify qualitative characteristics are certainly head and shoulders above picking and ranking the toughest sports in the world out of the ether.
2. One of the more widely-accepted “definitive” lists of the hardest sports in the world is an analysis ESPN released several years ago.
3. The of the most physically demanding sports in the world are based on ratings of 1-10 for 10 attributes, or skills, that go into the athleticism required for a sport.
4. Eight panelists each scored the 60 sports, and then the totals were averaged to decide upon a definitive ranking of the hardest sports in the world.
5. Based on their rankings, the top 10 hardest sports in the world are as follows: Boxing (hardest), ice hockey, football, basketball, wrestling, mixed martial arts, tennis, gymnastics, baseball/softball, and soccer.
6. Although we have our own takes on some of these, as well as others we believe should edge into the top 10, it’s a pretty reasonable list.

• According to, the top 10 hardest sports in the world to play in 2022 are as follows: Boxing (hardest), American football, mixed martial arts, ice hockey, gymnastics, basketball,, wrestling, rugby, and water polo.
• Another super comprehensive and quantitative approach to ranking the hardest sports in the world was on the seemingly impossible task.
• They chose six different attributes of each sport (speed, endurance, strength, agility, skill level, and physicality), assigned each of these attributes a score out of 10, and then ranked the summed scores using these final “toughness ratings” out of 60.
• The higher the toughness rating, the harder the sport.
• As per their ratings of the attributes for each sport, their rankings of the hardest sports in the world came out as follows (from hardest): Water polo, Aussie rules, boxing, rugby, ice hockey, American football, hurling, gymnastics, basketball, Gaelic football.
• Finally, according to, the top 10 hardest sports in the world in reverse order are freestyle wrestling, horseback riding, bull riding, water polo, figure skating, motocross, swimming, gymnastics, boxing, and rugby, landing at number one.
• Although this list is quite different from most of the others, it has some good entries and brings to light sports we often overlook.
• As can be seen, there’s no agreed-upon list of the hardest sports in the world, but let’s take a look at some of the toughest sports in the world and what makes them so hard.
• Related:

1. In no particular order, here are some of the world’s toughest sports:
2. Chosen by ESPN as the hardest sport in the world—and routinely landing on the top 10 lists of the toughest sports in the world by other prominent rankings—boxing is universally recognized as a crazy-hard sport.
3. It requires a ton of physical fitness, agility, speed, cardiovascular fitness, and skill.
4. Related:
5. Rugby is a full-contact sport, and it’s not for the faint of heart.
6. It basically involves playing American football without pads, and instead of stopping the game each time a tackle occurs, rugby players wrestle for the ball, and you can’t pass the ball forward, so you have to go through the defense.
7. There’s a ton of tackling, hitting, and dodging, and you need speed, strength, and endurance.

Ice hockey is intense. It involves racing around the ice for an hour, and there’s a ton of speed, strength, and agility required, not to mention the physicality required to fend off opponents.

• There’s tackling, tasseling, chasing, weaving, changing directions, and lots of strategy.
• Although confined almost entirely to the pocket of the world in Australia, Aussie Rules or ” footy ” is a challenging sport played on a huge oval field that somewhat resembles American football.
• It requires a lot of skill, for example bouncing the ball when running and only kicking or punching the ball to pass it, and there’s a lot of tackling.
• People often forget water polo because it’s not as popular as some of the hardest sports, but it’s undoubtedly a beast to play well.
• You have to run in the water without drowning while fending off lots of vigorous kicking and grabbing.
• Water polo requires a lot of cardiovascular endurance, strength, speed, power—basically every sort of aspect of athletic physicality.
• In addition to a, water polo requires a fair amount of skill.

1. Almost any fan or player of American football will argue that it is hands down the hardest sport in the world.
2. And, while it doesn’t get our vote for the hardest, it’s definitely a tough sport.
3. There’s tons of physicality, and it requires a lot of strength.
4. However, because the game starts and stops a lot, the endurance factor isn’t as demanding, which is what knocks it down a few pegs.
5. Hurling is an amateur sport popular in Ireland, similar to Gaelic football but played with a baseball-like ball and big sticks!
6. The game is fast, so it requires speed, and catching and striking the ball requires skill; plus, there’s a fair amount of physicality and endurance involved.

The requires tremendous endurance, so even if it scores lower in attributes like speed and physicality, it’s still a very demanding sport. The full Ironman consists of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a 26.2-mile run. Mixed requires a strong physique, agility, speed, and flexibility.

• Even though basketball is essentially a non-contact sport, so the physicality component is low, it requires a high degree of physical fitness and skill, from sprinting down the court, rapid directional changes, and shooting and dribbling.
• The speed of play tends to be high as well, so players need decent endurance.
• Related:

What do you think is the hardest sport in the world? Let us know! Interested in trying out a triathlon, one of the mentioned hardest sports in the world? Check out our to the different distances to see which one you would like to train for! : What Is The Hardest Sport In The World? 11 Super Tough Sports

How big do you have to be to play safety in football?

Matt Stroshane/Getty Images The one question I’m asked most by readers, Twitter followers and prospective writers is, “How do you break down NFL prospects?” It is also one of the toughest questions to answer in a tweet or quick email exchange. Here, I’ll go deeper.

Quarterbacks R unning Backs Wide Receivers Tight Ends Offensive Linemen Defensive Ends Defensive Tackles Outside Linebackers Inside Linebackers Cornerbacks

1. Knowing Your Coverages Scouting cornerbacks to play in the NFL comes with a unique set of challenges, as each player is asked to execute five different types of coverage on a routine basis. It’s not quite as simple as putting down notes on man and zone coverage, respectively, although those would qualify as good blanket statements for the types of coverage we’re seeing in the NFL today.

I’m a firm believer in education as a foundation for scouting. If you don’t know the coverages you’re projecting a player into, how can you scout him for it? Here’s a quick rundown of the five coverages you’ll see in the NFL. Cover 0: Man coverage by the safeties and cornerbacks. Cover 1: Man coverage by the strong safety and cornerbacks, with the free safety roaming.

Cover 2: The safeties divide the field with zone coverage while cornerbacks play the flats. Cover 3: Cornerbacks and free safety divide the field into thirds and play zone coverage, strong safety checks curl-to-flat. Cover 4: Cornerbacks and safeties divide the field into quarters and play zone coverage.2.

• Traits and Characteristics The differences between a free safety and strong safety have begun to blur over the last year, with both players needing the ability to cover and stop the run.
• In years past, a strong safety could survive without great coverage skills, but spread offenses have made it a requirement that both safeties be strong in all aspects of the game.

What are we looking for on film from safety prospects? A. Instincts A safety starts most plays in the NFL at least 15 yards off the ball, giving him a clear vantage point of everything that is happening on a given play. When playing free and strong safety, your first step is the most important.

• The safety must quickly and accurately read pass or run and make his first move to stop the play.
• A wrong read will leave the safety out of position to make a play, which usually results in big yards or points for the offense.
• It’s important for safety prospects to be fast and fluid, but all the speed in the world cannot cover up for a safety that cannot quickly and correctly diagnose a play.

When scouting college safeties, I’m obsessed with how quickly they move toward the play—whether that’s coverage or the run—and if they make the right move toward the ball. Being able to play the ball in the air and react on time will keep a player in the league.

1. This is the first commandment of safety play in my book.B.
2. Speed and Burst Speed is intoxicating for scouts, coaches and general managers, and for good reason.
3. On any given play, a safety will be tasked with running the alley to stop the run or turning and running in coverage.
4. More than any position on defense, safeties are constantly moving toward the ball, and they have more ground to cover than anyone else on the team to get there.

A safety must be fast enough to pursue the run in front of him by shutting down alleys before the runner gets through the first and second levels of the defense. He must also have enough burst to accelerate out of his breaks and attack the ball going both forward (toward the run) and backward (in coverage).

There are safety prospects without great speed, but those players make up for it with exceptional instincts. It’s good to have one or the other, but the best safeties in the game have been a combination of instincts and athletic ability. Remember: Speed is the foundation on which coverage ability and ball skills are built.C.

Agility and Technique Unlike their counterparts at cornerback, scouting a safety into the NFL requires very little imagination. Generally speaking, what you see is what you get. Safeties do play in different schemes, but they’re asked to do things—man and zone coverage.

A free safety will take the same drop steps into his backpedal on zone coverage. Same for a strong safety locked up in man coverage. This is what helps make scouting safeties an easier proposition than quarterbacks or cornerbacks. When evaluating game film, I want to see a safety who can flip his hips and run.

What does that mean? A pro-level safety must be agile enough to turn his hips and run with receivers when they make cuts in their routes. This can be summed up as a player’s ability to go from a backpedal to a run at an angle, and it’s vital to the success of a safety prospect once in the NFL.

1. Watching top safety prospects Kenny Vaccaro and Jonathan Cyprien during the 2013 pre-draft film sessions, you saw the coverage, range and tackling ability of immediate NFL starters.D.
2. Tackling The ideal safety is as athletic as a cornerback and as tough as a linebacker.
3. Those are hard to find, but that doesn’t mean we can rule out tackling ability as an important trait of a top-tier safety.

The spread of zone-option-type offenses in the NFL will continue to put more pressure on safeties to be active and efficient tacklers. Couple that with the recent trend of super-athletes at the tight end position and you have even more reason to look for a strong, sure tackler in your next draft pick.

As the last line of defense, the safety must be willing to tackle and he must be good at it. Charting broken tackles and tackles made when viewing a safety prospect will be your bible to accurately painting a picture of a player’s ability to bring down the ball-carrier.E. Size Size requirements for the safety position can vary depending on which team you ask, but the general rule of thumb is taller than 6’0″ and heavier than 200 lbs.

That can fluctuate, of course, but your dream safety who never leaves the field has to be big enough to stop the run and cover the field with range. It’s a goal of mine to not get too caught up in size for a safety prospect, especially those that might be too short or small for the prototypical safety.

Earl Thomas (5’10”, 202 lbs) is one of the best safeties in the game, but would come up short on most teams’ wish lists for size. Conclusion Scouting safeties often comes down to personal preference. Do you want the 4.3 burner with range and ball skills, or the 220-pound freight train knocking ball-carriers senseless? It’s rare to find both in a prospect, and if you do, bet on him being a top-15 pick in the upcoming draft.

Players like Troy Polamalu, Sean Taylor and Ed Reed have spoiled scouts in the last decade, but each remains a prototypical prospect because of his instincts, size, speed and tackling skills. When you go out looking for the next great safety, keep those three in mind.

How big do you have to be to play safety?

Final Thoughts – So, what did I learn? Safeties are big. Safeties and cornerbacks are roughly the same average height (both around six feet tall), but safeties on average weigh about 10 pounds more. That is a significant, and necessary, difference especially if you’re heavily involved in the run game.

Jack Gloop