Despite Hype, Damarious Randall Is Not 2015 NFL Draft's Top Safety Prospect

The 2015 NFL draft is now less than a week away and debates about which prospects rule the roost are still raging, especially at the safety position.

It appears safety is one of the most talent-poor positions in this draft. True as this may be, someone still has to be the best option. For months that player was considered to be Landon Collins from Alabama.

According to Mike Mayock’s top-five positional rankings, Damarious Randall ranks as his No. 1 safety in this class. The reason he gave for ranking him atop a weak safety class was because Randall was the best coverage safety available.

Rank	Name	School
1	Damarious Randall	Arizona State
2	Landon Collins	Alabama
3	Shaq Thompson	Washington
4	Quinten Rollins	Miami (Ohio)
T-5	Alex Carter	Stanford
T-5	Jaquiski Tartt	Samford

In a teleconference with media members leading up to the draft, Mayock vocalized his evolving safety rankings:

“The first safety off the board is going to be, in my opinion, Damarious Randall from Arizona State, and he’s by far the best cover safety in this draft,” Mayock stated. “Two months ago he was considered a third or fourth-round pick. Now he’s a first-round pick.”

According to Sheil Kapadia of Philly Mag, Greg Cosell of NFL Films, he can absolutely see the argument for Randall to be the best safety in this draft:

"

I think he's a better prospect than [Alabama safety] Landon Collins. He's a better mover. He can do more. The Eagles like to play with interchangeable safeties. I, personally, based on my film study don't see Landon Collins as an interchangeable safety with multi-dimensional skills.

"

So what led to Randall’s meteoric rise throughout this draft process?

At the 2015 NFL Scouting Combine, Randall was either third or tied for third among all safeties in most major measuring categories including the 40-yard dash (4.46 seconds), three-cone (6.83 seconds), 20-yard shuttle (4.07 seconds) and vertical (38 inches).

During the two years Randall was at Arizona State, he tallied an impressive amount of tackles in a blitz-heavy scheme. However, most of those tackles were ankle tackles that seem to max out his physical strength and slender frame.

At the combine he measured in at 5’11” and 196 pounds with approximately 30-inch arms and 8 5/8" hands. This equals out to be a very small safety.

Being undersized is far from the kiss of death, but it is certainly a valid concern for any prospect being considered in the first round or being touted as the best safety in the draft. More important than his smaller stature here is that his mentality seems to match his size.

Rick Scuteri/Associated Press

In other words, Randall doesn’t have the instincts required to play safety despite racking up a number of tackles in 2014. He can often be seen missing tackles and taking bad angles as well, which often led to big plays by the opponent.

In fact, Randall doesn’t even have good recovery speed. In the game against Oregon State, he failed to catch the running back on a long run that he is largely responsible for letting happen.

In general, he is not a physical player and will do his best to keep his jersey clean. Big hits will not be a part of his repertoire and he is a major risk to be run over by bigger, more physical players in the NFL.

If this is true, then what is everyone raving about?

Unfortunately, the biggest factors for his rising stock have already been mentioned earlier. It seems the combine numbers he produced mixed with his experience at cornerback have given evaluators an exaggerated impression that he is the best cover safety in this draft.

Don’t get me wrong, Randall is indeed quite capable playing in man coverage, there are just limited exposures to this skill actually showing up on tape and what the tape does show is a guy far from perfect at this trait.

I can even pull up an underrated, late-round prospect named Clayton Geathers (who many believe to be a strong safety) and show you several clips of his impressive cover skills that you just don’t see with the nearly the same frequency in Randall.

In truth, I couldn’t find enough video evidence to suggest Randall is a better cover guy than Adrian Amos of Penn State or Eric Rowe out of Utah.

Rick Bowmer/Associated Press

Even if you want to go on physical potential alone, Rowe is not only faster than Randall, but he is also significantly bigger as well at 6’1” 205 pounds with 31 1/2" arms. Rowe is another guy who has plenty of experience at cornerback and can provide even more versatility than Randall because he is bigger and has a more physical mentality. In addition, Rowe is a better tackler.

Nonetheless, Pro Football Focus provides some useful evidence that Randall is, in fact, a great coverage safety:

“Randall was one of six safeties in the class who saw at least 60 targets into their coverage in 2014. His 53.2 completion percentage allowed was lowest of that group.”  

When sticking to data provided by PFF, Adrian Amos led all safeties in this class with a 13.0 NFL passer rating against. At No. 4 is James Sample out of Louisville with a 33.1 rating. Randall didn’t even make the top 10.   

Regardless, they say film is more important than the stats. In this case, I’m still looking for evidence on tape to demonstrate outstanding coverage skills and I just don’t see enough to get me anywhere close to that. This dilemma leads me to concede that Randall is, at the very least, one of the better coverage guys in this draft but far from being considered in a class of his own.

So when you talk about what Damarious brings to the table, you have an undersized, fluid athlete with great change-of-direction and enough speed to cover sideline to sideline. But you also get a guy who takes ill-advised risks, has poor functional strength and avoids physicality to a degree.  

These assets are not unique to this draft class. As mentioned earlier, Eric Rowe and Adrian Amos are guys that have comparable athleticism and have established themselves as highly capable coverage guys. But with Rowe and Amos, you get more strength and size, as well as better tackling.  

Rather than tell you who the best safety in this draft class is, I’ll just say that it isn’t Damarious Randall. If I were the general manager of a team seeking a safety, I would take Landon Collins, Eric Rowe, Adrian Amos and Clayton Geathers over the former Sun Devil.

However, NFL teams couldn’t care less about my opinion at this point and they’re going to do what they see fit for their teams, which will probably involve Randall being either the first or second safety drafted while Geathers, Rowe and Amos wait patiently for their names to be called.