In the modern NFL, it’s the rare safety who’s paid to be just a safety. Three players classified as safeties finished the 2022 season with six interceptions: Minkah Fitzpatrick of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Justin Simmons of the Denver Broncos, and C.J. Gardner-Johnson of the Philadelphia Eagles. Each of those players had more than 100 snaps in the slot last season, and Gardner-Johnson’s deployment may have been most indicative of the ways in which defensive coordinators would like most of their safeties to play. He had 443 snaps at free safety, 202 in the box, and 208 in the slot.
If you are going to be a traditional deep safety most of the time, as Quandre Diggs of the Seattle Seahawks was with a league-leading 1,012 of his 1,221 snaps in the deep third, you’d better be some kind of ballhawk. Last season, only 21 players had more than 600 snaps at pure free safety, and the slot percentages for most safeties have increased exponentially over the last few years. In an NFL where nickel is the new base defense, and most defenses are playing as much or more dime than old-school base, the ways things worked before don’t work now most of the time.
So, when we look at the top nine draft prospects classified as safeties in this draft class, we’re focusing on positional versatility above all, and if positional versatility isn’t the thing, there had best be one mega/alpha skill if you want to make this list.
No matter where they play on the field from snap to snap, here are our nine best safeties for the 2023 NFL draft.
(All advanced metrics courtesy of Pro Football Focus, Sports Info Solutions, and Football Outsiders unless otherwise indicated).
(All prospect measurement percentiles courtesy of MockDraftable.com).