Despite the rules essentially being the same for decades upon decades, football is constantly changing.
As offenses advance in creativity, defenses must find ways to cope and keep up.
The spread offense in all of its various forms continues to change things and force defenses to devise ways to stop all of the spread’s variances.
A passing offense can take advantage of mismatches over the middle, pitting slot receivers against bigger defenders. An offense that is spread out also has advantages when it comes to running the ball, as the Buckeyes have shown under Urban Meyer.
The difficulty in defending an offense that spreads the field and can run it and throw it has made the search for suitable safeties paramount for Ohio State.
In the Buckeyes’ quarters defense, the safety positions are essentially mirror images of each other, but the boundary (strong) safety generally won’t have a slot receiver in his field of responsibility.
The free (field) safety has to cover that slot receiver on normal downs, and anymore, most teams have a third receiver on every snap. The field safety plays closer to the line of scrimmage as well, leaving the strong safety to patrol the deep part of the field, unless he too has some man responsibilities.
In today’s game there are so many receivers on the field – including tight ends – that coverage can no longer be a quality that is lacking.
That’s why when the Buckeyes are recruiting safeties, they’re not necessarily looking for a free safety type and a strong safety type. First and foremost, they just want safeties that can cover.
“We want coverage to go across the board,” safeties coach Alex Grinch said this spring. “At safety any more in college football, I think the trickle up effect to the National Football League is that ability to cover. That has to be number one on the job description for a safety versus spread offense. But obviously you have to have the physical tools to hold up in the run game.”
There have been times in the past where if a cornerback doesn’t pan out, teams would just move him back to safety because the man-to-man coverage responsibilities aren’t as daunting. That still happens, but what is much rarer today is the safety that is more of a linebacker than a coverage guy.
“It’s becoming more and more of a unique position,” Grinch said. “The big safety, the in-the-box safety, what used to be described as the strong safety, is kind of finding its way out of college football because of the lack of ability to cover in space.”
The way the game is played today – at least in Ohio State’s defense – is that safeties must be able to do both. They have to cover and they cannot be a liability against the run.
Having safeties that can do both is the ideal, which is why it shouldn’t be a surprise that current safeties Jordan Fuller and Isaiah Pryor have played both spots. Ideally, the position is interchangeable because the skill sets of the players at the position are almost identical.
And for very good reason.
“So at both spots you’ve got to be able to physically hold up in coverage versus a tight end that might be a matchup from a physical standpoint that you might be minus in, and you’ve gotta make sure that you have the speed and agility and coverage skills to cover a slot receiver that might have that quick skill set as opposed to the size skill set,” Grinch explained.
“And oh, by the way they have two backs in the backfield and a tight. You better come up and support the run. So it’s just a heck of a job description. It’s just becoming that way as football becomes more of a spread-out game.”
