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RockRam
I know many of us have wondered why Joyner was tagged and not Watkins. And what the hold-up could be considering how valuable Joyner seems to be to the secondary, and how well he played as FS. Here's an article about another safety that might shed a little light.
Tre Boston: Safety market is 'kinda rough man'
By Marc Sessler
Around the NFL Writer
Published: June 22, 2018 at 06:10 p.m. Updated: June 22, 2018 at 08:41 p.m.
Free agency hasn't been kind to veteran safeties.
NFL backstops have struggled to find work, something Tre Boston has experienced firsthand after recently turning down a low-level offer from the Cardinals.
"It's kinda' rough man, they got us where they think they want us," Boston told SiriusXM NFL Radio on Friday. "For us, we have to communicate with each other so we don't take this minimum wage."
Boston, 25, spent last year with the Chargers after toiling for the Panthers from 2014 to 2016. The former Panthers defender is mired in a dead safety market along with Eric Reid, Kenny Vaccaro and Mike Mitchell.
Boston has met with the Colts and Cardinals, saying of his Indianapolis visit: "I didn't meet with the [general manager], [head coach] or [defensive coordinator]. I was in the lunch room for [two] hours. I even got to play basketball."
As for his Cardinals meet-and-greet, Boston told Sirius: "They rolled out the red carpet for me, but the offer was very, very disrespectful."
"People think that you can find safeties anywhere," one former defensive coordinator told NFL Network's Bucky Brooks. "Listen to how people always talk about aging cornerbacks moving inside to safety when they lose their athleticism. Sure, some guys can do it, but there's a lot more that goes into the position than some realize. You have to be smart and a communicator to play in the back end. You also need to be a solid tackler in the open field.
"You can't just throw anybody in there and expect them to have success."
Boston has one thing going for him. Camp is around the corner, which means a sea of injuries will unfold. That alone will force coaches league-wide to acknowledge available safeties after an offseason full of disrespect.
The argument out there is that the league is blackballing Eric Reid for kneeling during the anthem, but doing it in a way that's harder for collusion cases to work, by basically signing no safeties in general. That is, they blackballed the whole position as a way of blackballing Reid, presumably to lessen the evidence of collusion.
Top safeties last year who signed 2nd contracts were being paid in the 11-12 M range.
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