Come On Everybody, Do The Safety Dance!
Corey Graham recently moved from cornerback to free safety, and it bear outs what I’ve thought all along: The Bears are content to go all “makeshift” when it comes to assembling their secondary.
Graham is just the latest member of the secondary to change positions in an effort by the Bears to compensate for their lack of a true free safety. Zack Bowman had previously made the corner-to-free safety move, but returned to his original position earlier this week.
The Bears are banking on Graham to display the type of range so many at the position before him have not. At 6-0, 193, he certainly has the size, but he’ll have to dust off the cobwebs; he hasn’t played free safety since two games into his collegiate career at New Hampshire.
Right now, Craig Steltz is taking snaps at free safety with the first team, but don’t expect that to be the case come preseason. Steltz is better suited to start at strong safety and at the end of the day will fight it out with Kevin Payne and Al Afalava for the right to do so.
Outside of Graham, the contenders at free safety are Josh Bullocks and Glenn Earl.
The other possibility is to employ more man coverage schemes in the defense to mask the free safety deficiencies and use Graham and Danieal Manning as some nickel/free hybrid. … I don’t know.
What I do know is that the Bears are clearly willing to put their four or five best defensive backs on the field and cross their fingers.
For the sake of the God-awful pass defense of last year, let us be optimistic that the Bears’ apparent approach to their secondary of best player available–opposite of how they draft–will bear well.
