sportscoach
RD's Guardians PR Man!
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Looking around at the best defenses in the NFL, there's a lot of "linebackers" who play like strong safeties. They are smaller than the linebackers of the 1990s and 2000s, but they are fast, cover fairly well, and can blitz. The key is having blockers occupying the defensive interior and edge to allow them to play in space, and I believe the Browns drafted those type of linemen the past three years.
Part of me feels also the factor of the TE could play a part in this. The guys on Offense are bigger and faster than they ever have been before, so you need faster guys on defense as well, which ends up turning up more importance to faster LBs and converting over bigger safeties to LB makes complete since to me. When you have TEs running 4.5 40s at 6'5 and 240+ lbs, you cannot cover them with 4.6-4.7 LBs anymore for the most part. I mean Obi was a safety in this draft, but listed at 6'4, 224 and we wanted him for our 4-2-5 system since his size and speed almost allows him to play both LB and Safety on paper. I feel you are likely to see in the next 10 years more of those style of players becoming needed by defenses if the offensive guys keep getting faster and faster while getting bigger. Honestly it wouldn't surprise me to see more 4-2-5 type of systems in place especially against 2 TE teams.