Earlier this offseason, I examined Chicago’s pass rush, and this week I want to shift gears to focus on the other part of pass defense: coverage. We started with CB, looked at LB yesterday, and today we’ll finish by examining the safeties.
Side note: If you read either of the last 2 articles, this one will follow the exact same format and have identical table setup, so hopefully the familiarity makes digesting all of the data a little easier.
Basic Coverage Stats
Let’s start with a basic look at coverage stats for Chicago’s safeties last year. There were 85 S with 250+ coverage snaps, or 2.7 per team, which makes a convenient threshold for starting players since some teams deploy 3 safety nickel looks fairly frequently. Chicago had 3 safeties qualify in 2023: Eddie Jackson, Jaquan Brisker, and Elijah Hicks. They also signed two more players this offseason who qualified in Kevin Byard (spent 2023 with Titans and Eagles) and Jonathan Owens (spent 2023 with Packers), so we’ll examine their coverage metrics as well.
- Ranks compared to the 85 S in the sample are given in parentheses, and for a little context, 43rd would be exactly in the middle.
- Those in the top 25% (21st or better) are highlighted in green.
- Those in the bottom 25% (65th or worse) are highlighted in red.
- All data for this article is from Pro Football Focus (PFF).
