Welcome to the Hardcore Husky Forums. Folks who are well-known in Cyberland and not that dumb.
Daniel Jeremiah on the toughest postion to scout
AtomicPiss
Administrator, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 64,793 
"The toughest for me to evaluate is safety. because the spread offense has made it darn near impossible. You can watch 5 games and all you see is bubble screen right, bubble screen left. You don't get a chance to see a safety read a route combination, range off the hash, make NFL type movements, reactions and plays. So a lot of it is guesswork. It takes a lot more film study for me than any other position than any other to sort out.
"And this is not a good safety draft. I have one safety in my top 50 [for 2015]. This is another long discussion we can get into sometime about why there are no safeties. It's the hardest position to find. In my opinion it's the spread offenses. You recruit a 5 star athlete. JuJu Smith is a perfect example. a 5 star guy from USC. He's played safety, receiver. Well, you want to put the ball in his hands because you get a chance to score and make plays. So those guys end up at receiver. Whereas if you put him out at safety, and you go four and five wide, you can negate the effectiveness of a safety when you're just throwing bubble screens and quick hitters. So if you have a great athlete at safety, it's not a difference maker in college like it is in the NFL. So that's the reason why we're not seeing a lot of safeties coming out year after year."
- Daniel Jeremiah
From his Move the Sticks Podcast
"And this is not a good safety draft. I have one safety in my top 50 [for 2015]. This is another long discussion we can get into sometime about why there are no safeties. It's the hardest position to find. In my opinion it's the spread offenses. You recruit a 5 star athlete. JuJu Smith is a perfect example. a 5 star guy from USC. He's played safety, receiver. Well, you want to put the ball in his hands because you get a chance to score and make plays. So those guys end up at receiver. Whereas if you put him out at safety, and you go four and five wide, you can negate the effectiveness of a safety when you're just throwing bubble screens and quick hitters. So if you have a great athlete at safety, it's not a difference maker in college like it is in the NFL. So that's the reason why we're not seeing a lot of safeties coming out year after year."
- Daniel Jeremiah
From his Move the Sticks Podcast
Comments
Maybe I should have just started a BOUNCE! thread.
You could almost tie this in with the 7-on-7 thread on the recruiting bored as there's a lot of overlap.
This time of year is like a dead period. We need spring ball to start but we have to wait til late March! ARRRRGH
The only teams that will be balanced are those that have such depth with those kinds of athletes that they can
Hardcore Husky. Cracking wise since 2012.
If we had, say, a tripper johnson back there it would have been a bubble screen massacre.
Doogles, it seems like he's saying that BFL safeties have a harder or more mentally challenging job. Coverages and routes are more complicated. It's hard to find film where college safeties can be seen executing coverages or making reads comparable to what they'll need to do in the nfl. They can evaluate their speed, quickness, and tackling but not the mental side.
I get that the movements and responsibilities can be different in college vs the NFL, but safety play is as crucial as ever in college football. You can't stop spread offenses without safeties that can cover and tackle.
I know Allison is speaking from an informed point of view, but it would be interesting what other scouts had to say.
You can play against this type of offense effectively IF you have the right pieces. Take a look at how TCU played for most of the years - particularly in the games against Oklahoma, Baylor, and Ole Miss (all to varying degrees of success). Defensively they play a 4-2-5 defense (2 CBs and 3 S) that relies on the front 6 + 1 safety (changing from play to play) to stop the run game while playing press coverage on the receivers with no more than 1 safety deep on most plays. The ways to beat them defensively are to 1) effectively run the ball to force them to provide more attention to the box to soften up the defensive coverage and 2) to hit a lot of jump balls in the deep passing game. Considering that TCU is producing high-end CB (will have 1st round picks at the position in each of the last 2 years) and have always had good safety play, it's easier said than done.
Oklahoma ran the ball 42 times for 152 yards while completing 14 of 36 passes for 309 yards. 3 of their TDs came directly as the result of massive chunk plays in the passing game.
Baylor was able to effectively run the ball to the tune of 54 carries for 272 yards. However, in the passing game, the chunk plays were again the basis of the offense as they completed 28 of 55 for 510 yards with large chunks of that coming on deep throws. Baylor's probably the poster child IMO for the modern spread with their wide WR splits to the sideline that force defenses to either defend the run or the pass and to tip their hand accordingly prior to the snap. It's not uncommon that you'll find 4 Baylor WRs lined up before the snap and all 4 of them are outside of the numbers defensively.
Ole Miss relied on the spread all year, although they weren't a great running team. Their inability to run (37 times for 9 yards, no run longer than 12 yards) made it impossible for their outside players to break loose as Ole Miss completed 11 of 27 throws for 120 yards.
Even with some of the best defensive coaching and arguably one of the top 5 defenses in the country, TCU was helpless against a Baylor team that is able to manipulate the field such that they create significant space and eliminate the ability for teams that play good defense to utilize the strength of ANY good defense (the ability to defend with numbers by rallying to the football and executing their assignments).
It's one of the reasons that I think that as long as offenses are allowed to basically operate in a manner that is anything goes, you'll continue to see obscene offensive numbers in college football. I saw it for year in watching Texas HS football in how they target the weakest of the links and just abuse it to the point that defenses have absolutely no shot. That has drifted into college football notably in that part of the country as well. I don't think you'll ever quite see that at the NFL level. But college needs to get back to avoiding games that end up 61-58 between two of the better teams in the country.