New Orleans Saints Defense Counting On Continued Development From Jordan Howden In His Second Season

Howden showed me enough to feel comfortable with him taking over for Marcus Maye. Granted, he didn't have to show much because I was never high on Maye. I didn't understand the signing and the scheme fit. We lose both Safeties and they are replaced by Marcus Maye and the Honey Badger? Seemed so random. Both guys seemed like better fits at SS and definitely not the rangy single high FS we had in Marcus Williams.

But such is life. Maye is gone and Honey Badger has been fine. We should be okay with Howden and Honey Badger but the rest of the depth chart looks a little dicey. The Saints feel good about it though I guess because they've had every opportunity to draft top Safeties prospects the last few years. Seems like fans like me place more value on the position than most of the NFL does. Considering the wide open, pass happy nature of the league you'd think that having fast, athletic dudes running around trying to defend all the space on the field would be a priority. To me Safety is like the defensive version of the TE position. Overvalued by fans while the actual teams are willing to get by with whatever they have on hand and use resources elsewhere.

I think the reason for Maye/Badger was that neither were pure single high guys or pure box guys but could play both and be interchangeable. Prior to Williams departure we were a single high man team/Cover 3 unit with some 2 high mixed in. The league itself started to trend to two high, and so did we..along with still being primarily a man team on 3rd down.

With regards to the league trend, unfortunately Safeties are usually the last player to affect the ball thus being devalued. It's a position I'd trade for or sign in FA, same with LB.