Biggest losers from the 2023 NFL Draft

2023 CFP National Championship - TCU v Georgia

The safety class

Now let’s talk about the players in this draft and the position group received no love. Depending on whether you count Alabama’s Brian Branch and Illinois’ Jartavius Martin as safeties, since they primarily lined up at nickel and that’s where they’ll likely be deployed by the Lions and Commanders respectively, you can argue no legit safety came off the board until Martin’s former teammates Sydney Brown going to the Eagles at the top of the third round (66th overall).

Only two others were selected for the rest of the day – Penn State’s Ji’Ayir Brown (87th) going to the 49ers and Alabama’s Jordan Battle (95th) going to the Bengals. Two more were selected in the fourth round, before we finally saw 13 combined over the final three rounds of the weekend.

Generally, I wouldn’t pay too much attention and many people have called this a weaker safety class. While I don’t consider it one of the stronger groups we’ve seen in recent years and we lack any type of blue-chip players among it, I do disagree with the sentiment about the class as a whole.

I had eight guys inside my personal top-100 big board (including Branch and Martin, who I mentioned at the top) and six more among the “next 30 names” I listed below it – so basically 14 inside my top-130.

I know that I was personally higher on the group than consensus, but even looking at where some of these names were projected to go – Texas A&M’s Antonio Johnson (160th) ended up being a fifth- instead of a fringe second-/third-rounder, Florida State’s Jammie Robinson (145th) went about 50 picks later than expected, Georgia’s Chris Smith II (170th) waited nearly 100 picks longer.

Altogether 19 safeties were inside the top 259 prospects, based on the consensus board provided by MockDraftDatabase.com.

Now, what does this tell us? Well, first of all, there may be some medical issues with these guys that we’re not aware of. I can’t speak to any of that. However, my theory revolves more around the schematic changes the meta of defensive football has experienced recently.

With more NFL teams adapting split-safety principles, the profiles of guys they’re now looking for on the back end has changed. Sure, there are teams who still value free safety types who can make plays on the ball-numbers-to-numbers and rangy players will always be desirable, but it’s not as much about finding those high-level athletes all the time.

Many teams are looking for more well-rounded skill sets, where they can roll somebody in the deep post, but also drive on routes in quarters to their side, basically play off-man against slot receivers with extra cushion, and maybe most importantly, charge up the alley against the run, in order to even out negative box counts.

Those player profiles are currently easier to find in the later rounds still – which was apparent with how much this class got pushed down – and that’s a trend I’ll be following closely going forward.