Most improved position groups during the 2023 NFL offseason

Safeties – Detroit Lions

Additions: C.J. Gardner-Johnson, Brian Branch & Brandon Joseph

Subtractions: DeShon Elliott, Juju Hughes & C.J. Moore

Lions safeties C.J. Gardner-Johnson and Brian Branch

For the final position group, we’re looking at a Lions safety room, which was led in snaps by rookie standout Kerby Joseph (77.3%) and Will Harris ended up being their primary slot defender (58.1% of snaps last played), but otherwise looks very different.

Looking at this Lions defense as a whole in 2022 ranked, they dead-last by a wide margin in EPA (0.194 vs. 0.098 as the next-closest mark) in weeks one through eight, but from week nine on they improved drastically to 21st league-wide (0.006). More impactful actually was that they went from forcing 0.75 all the way to 1.6 turnovers per contest over those final ten weeks.

Schematically, I would say the biggest reason for that turnaround were switching to more big nickel as their standard personnel grouping. They subbed off Mike Hughes for a safety (primarily Harris), which in return allowed them to go away from as many static cover-three looks to more split-field principles and changing up the picture as the snap was imminent.

By signing one of the biggest play-makers on the back-end last year from a Super Bowl participant and using a top-50 pick on a couple of versatile DBs, they may be able to add to Aaron Glenn’s playbook. He was sort of on the hot-seat mid-way through 2022, but instead, they cut ties with their secondary coach.

In terms of the personnel losses at the safety position, the one that hurts a little bit here is DeShon Elliott. I’d say he’s been a solid starter each of his four years in the NFL (with PFF grades between 65 and 70 in all of them), taking over for what turned out to be a really poor signing of Earl Thomas in Baltimore, before playing 91% of defensive snaps across the 14 games he was available for his one season in Detroit.

The issue with him simply is that he’s missed 24 of 66 possible games in his career and that’s a big reason he just signed another one-year deal with Miami for 1.8 million dollars. Among 123 safeties, who played at least 100 snaps last season according to PFF, Juju Hughes finished 111th with an overall grade of 52.3, allowing two touchdowns (and no interceptions) on 11 career targets across three seasons and being more of a designated special teamer.

C.J. Moore is probably coming off his best season as a rotational player in the secondary, but there’s a reason he’s only totaled 345 defensive snaps, as an undersized safety who’s missed 18.2% of his career tackling attempts.

Transitioning to the additions made, I was kind of shocked to see Chauncey Gardner-Johnson sign just a one-year, fully guaranteed 6.5-million-dollar contract. Going back to the safety database of PFF for guys with 100+ snaps, the fifth-year veteran only ranked 72nd in terms of overall grade (63.9), but that was basically learning a new position as a deep safety almost exclusively, after being a designated nickel through three years in New Orleans.

He was tied for the lead-league with interceptions (six), despite playing just 12 games and he actually cut down his missed-tackle rate to 15.8%, which had been his biggest weakness up to that point. Only twice did he miss multiple opportunities despite working in expanded space, which included a couple of tremendous one-on-one stops against Isiah Pacheco in the Super Bowl, that is burnt into my brain.

I’d say he did get a little lucky on a couple of his picks, where somebody batted the ball up for him, and he’s still learning how to properly manage space as a deep zone defender, but his radar for the ball and the way he plays it in the air was apparent and you still have that flexibility to plug him into the slot, where his physicality can help throw off the timing of routes.

Along with that, Detroit also traded up three spots in the second round to select Alabama’s Brian Branch 45th overall, who fell a little bit due to being labeled a pure nickel by some teams I guess, but among guys with the cleanest tape this past season, there were only a handful of guys you could put up there with him.

Branch was the third-highest-ranked draft-eligible safety in 2022 by PFF (84.8) among guys with 100+ snaps. Right at six-foot flat and 190 pounds, running a 4.58 at the combine, there’s nothing that truly stands out about his profile on paper, but you put on the film and this guy’s presence is palpable.

Playing a heavy rate of off-man coverage for the Crimson Tide, how much he excelled at reading the hips of receivers and the fact there was almost no wasted movement really stood out, which is how he was responsible for a passer rating of just 75.5 despite facing a strong collection of SEC receivers.

Yet, Nick Saban and company deployed him in a multitude of places once they got to obvious passing downs, where his football IQ and spatial awareness consistently shined. What you really love however is what he provides in run defense, being able to discard slot receivers quickly, whilst being allowed to “shoot his shot” enabled him to collect 14(!) TFLs last season, yet he only missed a minuscule 2.3% of his career tackling attempts (four of 176).

Even though Kerby Joseph would profile physically as a guy playing closer to the line of scrimmage, he actually has excelled in his final season at Illinois and as a rookie as a ball-hawk on the back end.

So I’d expect the Lions to be in big nickel yet again as a primary personnel set, where CGJ and Branch can be used pretty interchangeably and we could see a bunch of late rotations, where those two basically swap positions. Plus, Brandon Joseph is a player who was looked at as a potential first-rounder a couple of years ago thanks to his ball skills, even though we’ve learned about his lack of physicality and high-end athletic traits, which forced him to ultimately go undrafted.

Honorable mention: Cleveland Browns

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