If you can’t choose one, choose both? Apparently that’s what Sports Illustrated was thinking recently.
SI tabbed their “most underrated” players for each team in the NFL and for the Bills, it was too hard to choose between their starting safeties: Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer. So the pick? Both Hyde and Poyer.
Here’s why Conor Orr picked both Bills safeties for the honor:
This may be a bit of a cop-out here, especially since Hyde made a Pro Bowl in 2017, making him properly “rated” at least once in his career. But let’s view this as a public service announcement of sorts. How many people consider the Bills to have one of the better safety tandems in the league? Both have missed fewer than 11 tackles, kept opposing QB completion percentages below 70 and, combined, the pair have contributed roughly 50 snaps in various blitz packages, helping to diversify the looks seen by opponents.
Underrated consideration for these two guys in the eyes of Bills fans is probably shocking. This just goes to show how potentially overlooked the Buffalo secondary is. Instead of Hyde and Poyer, guys such as cornerback Levi Wallace or linebacker Matt Milano would really, truly be, underrated players. But the safety duo? Well… OK.
On Hyde and Poyer being put in this category, let’s hope there’s a changing of the guard in the NFL, thanks in part to Tre’Davious White. Early in White’s career, he was overlooked for national honors, too. In 2019, he was named an All-Pro. Could that national light on the Bills’ No.1 cornerback catch their safeties in 2020?
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