NFL Draft preview: Weak crop of safeties
Six of the top 17 pass catchers in the NFL last season were tight ends, and there's no reason to believe the trend of utilizing that position in the passing game will subside.
That means teams are looking for big, fast safeties who can cover freakishly athletic tight ends such as the New England Patriots' Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez and the New Orleans Saints' Jimmy Graham.
The Bears are no different, even though they believe they could already have their safety tandem of the future in Chris Conte and Major Wright, whom they acquired in the third round of the past two drafts.
Unfortunately for defensive coordinators, this year's safety crop leaves much to be desired. Alabama's Mark Barron is probably the only safety who will be drafted in the first round, and the Bears won't use their top pick at 19 to address that position. Only one or two other safeties may be drafted before the fourth round.
The best of the rest after Barron are Notre Dame's 6-foot-2, 213-pound Harrison Smith and Boise State's 6-foot-3½, 225-pound George Iloka, both of whom are better suited as free safeties.
Smith, who also got several starts at linebacker for the Irish early in his career, was a four-year starter and says handling tight ends is one of the things he does best.
“That's something that I can bring to teams, the ability to cover tight ends man-to-man,” he said. “It's something I did throughout my career. In practice, I got to go against Kyle Rudolph, and this past year I went against Tyler Eifert, and he'll be picked next year.”
The 6-foot-6, 258-pound Rudolph was the Vikings' second-round pick (43rd overall) a year ago and had 26 catches for 249 yards as a rookie.
“There's a difference when you're dealing with a guy that size, like all these tight ends are,” Smith said. “They're tall, they can run, they're agile, they've got big hands, and they can catch everything. There'd be times in practice when I'd have Kyle covered, but he'd still catch the ball, just because he's so big that you can't get around him. So it's really just about body position.”
Despite his excellent size, Iloka showed enough speed and movement skills to start three games at cornerback last season, and his 4.03-second time in the 20-yard shuttle was the best among all safeties at the Combine. But he does not get high marks as a ball athlete. After picking off 4 passes as a freshman, Iloka had just 3 in the next three years.