Examining the Lions’ 3-Safety Personnel on Defense
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One of Detroit Lions head coach Matt Patricia’s staples on defense is his frequent use of three safeties.
A lot of times, the Lions' 3-3-5 alignment is their base formation to start a game.
They had three different safeties all play at least 50 percent of the defensive snaps a season ago: Tracy Walker, Tavon Wilson and Will Harris.
Recently, Wilson said his goodbyes to Detroit after a solid four years, and signed with the Indianapolis Colts.
Despite the Lions trading for free safety Duron Harmon and signing Jayron Kearse, the Lions didn’t exactly add a direct replacement for their former strong safety.
You could argue that Kearse -- who is suspended for the first three games anyway -- is more of a big slot cornerback, with how the Minnesota Vikings used him a season ago. And Harmon is a prototypical deep safety.
In all likelihood, it would appear that the second-year pro in Harris will be the one to fill the box safety void.
Speaking of the Lions and how they deploy their safeties, let’s take a deeper look at the three main safety roles in their defense.
Deep free safety
Last year, Harris was the main deep free safety after the Quandre Diggs trade. The position is exactly as the title suggests.
In the Lions' man-heavy cover-1 scheme, it leaves only one safety deep to cover the entire field while it’s man-to-man underneath.
There is a lot of ground to cover, and it usually requires a great athlete with great instincts as well.
Harris was the single-high deep safety on 196 plays in 2019 -- the most of any Lions defender.
Plus, he was still deep for another 212 snaps on plays with multiple free safeties. In total, Harris had 408 of his 667 defensive snaps take place deep.
Considering that Harmon is now penciled in to be the starting free safety, he played deep in 511 of his 702 defensive snaps with the New England Patriots last year.
Free safety (JOKER)
This position belongs to Walker.
Technically, Walker can be labeled as a free safety, but he moves around all over the place.
The “JOKER” name implies that he doesn’t have a defined position, just as there are JOKERs on offense and even sometimes with the front-seven defensive players.
As was seen last year, Walker can almost play an entirely different position from week to week depending on the matchups.
Looking at where Walker lined up last season, he played a total of 843 defensive snaps -- 33 on the line, 147 as a linebacker, 107 as a strong safety, 177 as a slot corner, 48 as a wide corner and 331 snaps as a free safety.
So, yes, Walker can be considered a free safety, but he does so much more, and is crucial to the Lions' defensive scheme.
Strong safety (Box safety/hang defender)
As previously mentioned, Wilson manned this position over the last two seasons under Patricia -- a position typically located closer to the line of scrimmage and oftentimes in the box.
Typically, this player is someone who is strong against the run, but smaller than a linebacker who helps in coverage against tight ends and bigger slot receivers.
In 2019, Wilson played 95 snaps on the edge, 328 plays in an off-ball linebacker alignment, 118 times as a box safety, 97 snaps in the slot and 44 as an outside corner.
Adding all of those up, of Wilson’s 840 total defensive snaps, 682 of them were played close to the line of scrimmage.
Only his 158 remaining plays came in a traditional deeper safety look. However, it was rare for Wilson to be the only free safety when he was deep.
Again, player strengths would suggest that this should be Harris’ main role moving forward.
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