Horseshoe Heroes
FanSided

Colts Ryan Grigson: Landon Collins ‘Can Do It All’ at Safety

By Luke Schultheis

facebooktwitterreddit

The Indianapolis Colts could be seriously looking for a young safety in this year’s NFL Draft. At his pre-NFL Draft press conference today, their General Manager Ryan Grigson has said his scouting department has been scouring all of the viable safety prospects on their board, but the draft evaluation process is never easy, especially with this year’s apparent safety drop-off after Alabama’s Landon Collins in the first round.

His team may be forced to look at safety prospects in later rounds as a result, and those players tend to have “more warts”, meaning they tend to be more flawed as prospects:

"“We’ve been digging, and going through every single player and the further you get down on your board, the more warts appear with those spots,” said Grigson. “You know, there might be a guy that plays his tail off and you love the fact the film, but then you look at the height, weight, and speed, and they ran a 4.90 (forty-time). So you’re like, how am I going to draft a 4.90 safety? Or there might be a guy that plays lights out and you know, but he’s only 185 pounds. So you know you’re going to have significant drawbacks in some of those guys later.”"

However, Grigson seems to be a strong believer in Alabama’s Landon Collins, as he said the Crimson Tide safety can “do it all” at his position:

"“The safety position is tricky to me at least,” added Grigson. “Maybe to others, not so much, maybe it’s clearer to others, but there’s a trend for the not-so-traditional safety anymore. It’s more of a free safety type, that has cover ability, has that corner background, but a guy like Landon can do it all. You know, there’s only so many of those guys in the draft. There’s really not many.”"

Unfortunately for Grigson, while Collins may be the most complete safety in this draft by a large margin, there’s a strong chance he’ll be off the draft board before the Colts can select him at #29 overall. The team may have to look at some of the early-mid round alternatives, which “gets tricky”.

Grigson made a valid observation though that the safety position is evolving. The true “in-the-box”, one dimensional run-stuffing strong safeties are becoming more of a dying breed, as the NFL has transformed into mostly a pure passing league. Instead, more free safety-types with exceptional range and coverage ability like the New England Patriots Devin McCourty or Green Bay Packers Ha Ha Clinton-Dix are becoming the new safety prototype and rightfully so.

More from Horseshoe Heroes

Home/Colts Draft