Super Nomario said:
Maybe in some situations, but a lot of the safety positioning is dictated by the offensive formation. I think it's overblown how much Revis is truly on an island and how much the Patriots truly double-team the other side.
The evidence for the island lies in "number of times the opposing QB throws passes toward Revis". In the Super Bowl it was once, and that's not an outlier. So yes, formations have a lot to do with it, but if the FS knows going in to each play that he doesn't have to worry much about Revis' coverage area, I'd say that does lead to cheating, and may even skew the overall McCourty analysis since he benefitted from that knowledge all season.
I'm not sure about $7 MM - $8 MM either.
Me either. But it's projected to be a large chunk of change (even if less than the $9M tag value) and also recognizing this:
Another factor here: both the FA safety class and the draft safety class are considered to be weak.
So it does appear that market forces will likely drive a high price (more on that later).
if you were going to run Cover 1 with a pair of average corners, the free safety would deserve hazard pay, but my point is that Cover 1 is probably off the table with two average corners. You're probably going to have to play more of a zone-based concept that doesn't demand as much range from your FS if you don't have good man-to-man CBs.
That's a very interesting observation. So if a top of the line safety only shows his true value in cases where teams are running cover 1, doesn't that limit the market to teams who run currently run Cover 1? Most teams probably do have "average corners", so why pay top dollar if the impact of a high end Free Safety is just marginal?
But the real question is whether the Pats look at the Free Safety position the same way as other teams do. As you note, both McCourty and Eugene Wilson were converted to play this position from cornerback, and Logan Ryan played some just last season. There's a pattern here, and it isn't one that involves dedicating a big piece of the cap to what the Pats may well perceive as a fungible position.