We have no idea when our starters will be ready to go. If at all in 2026. Hopefully. It is time to look at safety closely without Branch/Kerby:
Say we start Thomas Harper at FS and Avonte Maddox at SS with a good dose of Christian Izien. Depth options look like Dan Jackson/Loren Strickland/Chuck Clark.
Can we win with that? I feel like yes we can. Harper and Izien are or will be 26. Young and hungry. Jackson and Strickland pushing, Clark coaching/mentoring.
I feel like we have started worse over the last 20 years. Thoughts?
It’s too bad that they’ll be covering up for 2nd tier safety play instead of having the best safety pair in the league taking advantage of the chaos
Safety and Tight End were 2 positions I thought we’d address in the draft, we did neither. Hopefully thats a good sign and not a bad one. I’m going to trust in Brad but hopefully it’s not another “we’re good” position that haunts us all year.
Yes we can win with what the op named at Safety, I just think it went from a position of strength to a position of weakness.
I think the backup safeties can be serviceable and decent. But it’s the game changing plays that Branch and Kerby make that flip games. Kerby especially with so many massive momentum changing interceptions he has had in his career. Very hard to replace that. Hopefully Kerby is able to play, although he might not be the same with the chronic knee
I hope Kerby is available and able. If not I’m okay with Izien as Branch and Harper as Kerby for 10 games. Not ideal but we put a bit less on their plate and work around it. If we get our OL solved then the defense suddenly adds significantly more margin for error.
Yes. But you go from possibly the best safety duo in the league to average. Actually, we don’t know that they’ll be average; they could be top 5 or bottom 5 for all we know about them. But we can win with that rotation.
I was also surprised they did not go S in the draft. If its because they feel better about BB, Kerby, or both, that would be good.
Will the safety play really be 2nd tier? That is the question I am asking. We are not going to get elite level safety play. But can we be above average/maybe good with Harper/Maddox/Izien?
I think our difficulty of assignment for the safety position recedes without our two stars back there which eases the transition for their replacements but puts more strain on other areas of the defense. It was going to happen during the season somewhere anyways. Let’s just get it out of the way.
I think they’re going to play a ton of 3 safety looks this year with Clark playing in the box, Harper deep and Izien being the overhang/NB/defacto WLB piece
I didn’t really buy the narrative that the safety play was serviceable after Branch went down. I think teams just left them alone because they were free to attack the defense in many ways once the safeties became one-dimensional
Haha no doubt. It also seems like when we do pay someone then immediately they get injured. See Alim, Romeo, Ragnow, Walker and Kerby as 5 examples off the top of my head.
Previous regimes but yes. I was listing guys Holmes gave extensions to and then got seriously injured before the ink dried on the contract. It’s just brutal luck.
Joseph we just can’t assume anything. Is there a chance he starts the season. Yes. Is there a chance he plays 2 games and is on IR again, yes. Strong chance. The current depth might at this point be better then a hobbled Joseph. But I don’t think anyone right now on the depth chart is plus start per say, quality but not necessarily anything more. Think Branch should be back by Thanksgiving. And who knows at what level of play. But I think Branch has a good chance of being back to his old self.
