Kansas City Chiefs Paul Pulley

Chiefs Free Agent Focus: Safety Landon Collins

LadnerMorse February 19, 2019 No Comments

 

 

 

 

Chiefs Free Agent Focus:

Safety Landon Collins

 

by Paul Pulley | February 19, 2019

 

The Kansas City Chiefs defensive secondary was one of the worst in the NFL in 2018. Even though there are players on the team that had decent seasons, as a whole, the unit stunk. When it was needed most, the inability to slow down an opponents offense, let alone bring them to a stop, led to the demise of the defensive coordinator and a total revamping of the defensive coaching staff.

 

As new defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo reviews film, he isn’t going to see much that inspires confidence moving forward. When watching the safeties, he’s going to see a lot of players out of position, slow to react, late to the ball, taking bad angles and guys missing tackles. He’s also going to see a lot of players watching teammates make tackles, gang tackling was just not in the 2018 Chiefs vocabulary. The Chiefs have a number of safeties on the roster for 2019. The problem is… that’s what we have. There is one, who was once a great player, who is way over-paid and can’t stay healthy enough to stay on the field. We have several sub-par players that wouldn’t be on a team that had a good defense and then we have a couple of young guys that have shown promise. House cleaning at the safety position could go a long way in ridding the Chiefs of some bad contracts, creating a little cap space in doing so, and improving one of the weakest positions on the team.

 

 

 

One of ArrowheadOne’s most prolific commenters — berttheclock — has mentioned numerous times how Seattle’s “Legion of Boom” suffered greatly when their safeties were unable to play, leaving the cornerbacks exposed, weakening the secondary. This has been one of the Chiefs problems the last two seasons. The safety play is so poor that at times it looks as if the Chiefs only have 9 guys on defense. This has led to not only poor play against the passing game, but has also weakened the run defense. To be clear, the Safety is helpful against the pass and well as against the run. Is it any coincidence that the Chiefs run defense has soured over the past two seasons without a healthy Eric Berry?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Introduction to Landon Collins

This is where I propose the Chiefs bring in Safety Landon Collins. Collins was selected with the very first pick of the 2nd round of the 2015 draft, number 33 overall, by the New York Giants. Collins played collegiately at Alabama and was part of the 2012 National Championship team. He played mostly special teams his Freshman year, but took over a starting safety position his Sophomore and Junior seasons. Landon proved to be a very prolific tackler and showed good ball skills with 5 interceptions his final two seasons. Collins entered the NFL draft after his Junior year.

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/JordanRaanan/status/1049370062409388032

 

 

 

 

 

The Chiefs new defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo was the Giants DC for the first three seasons of Collins career. He’s shown his versatility by starting his career playing as the Giants Free Safety and since has been playing as Strong Safety. He has proven to be just as prolific a tackler in the NFL, recording over 100 tackles in each of his first three seasons. In 2018, Collins recorded 96 tackles in 12 games, missing the final 4 games of the season after being placed on IR after having surgery due to suffering a partially torn rotator cuff in week 13. He’s has also demonstrated solid ball skills with 8 career interceptions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2016 has been Collins best season thus far, where he had a record setting season, was named 1st team all pro and was named Defensive Player of the Year by the Kansas City Committee of 101. He just turned 25 years old in early January, 2019 and is a player that I have been wanting the Chiefs to acquire this off-season for quite some time, even before the defensive coaching staff makeover. With the Chiefs replacing the defensive coordinator position with Spagnuolo and with Collins familiarity with Spags system, I believe the addition of Collins would be invaluable to the change over to a new defensive scheme. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cap Considerations and Contract Talks

In the past 9 seasons, Kansas City has foolishly set the safety market by twice over paying a single player at that position, making him the highest paid safety in the NFL both times. This has forced other teams to pay equally adept players a comparable salary, until last year. The NFL safety market was totally messed up in 2018, with several good players at that position struggling to find work and several ended up playing on one year deals for relatively low salaries. A new market may be beginning to materialize, with the Carolina Panthers recently signing Eric Reid to a new deal. The 27 year old Reid signed a contract that has been reported as a 3 year deal worth just over $22M, and with $9M in guarantees.

 

With new DC Steve Spagnuolo already having had a couple shots at being a NFL head coach without much success, and with Kansas City Chiefs HC, Andy Reid, holding onto his coaches to the bitter end, it’s possible that Spags could be the Chiefs DC as long as Reid is the Chiefs HC.

 

With Landon Collins still a young 25 years old, proven to be a very good player and being familiar with the Chiefs new defense, I wouldn’t be afraid to offer him a long term deal. With the salary cap continuing to increase, player salaries will have to increase until the league owners decide to expand the roster number. With that in mind, I would offer Collins a 5-year contract for $45M, with a $10M signing bonus and $28M in guarantees. A simple contract could look like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A contract similar to this would let the Chiefs easily walk away after 3 years, but would still be very affordable for the full length of the contract, after which time Collins would be 30 years old and a replacement should already be in place. A contract like this, with a 2019 cap hit of just $5.5M, combined with releasing Eric Berry with a post June 1 designation, would free up $4M of cap space on June 2nd, 2019.

 

I believe this would be a good place to start in free agency this year.

 

 

 

Paul Pulley — ArrowheadOne

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Editor’s Note: Today is the first day that NFL teams can apply the Franchise Tag to one of their Free Agents. We expect Dee Ford to be that player for the Chiefs. Teams have about 15 days, until March 5th at 4:00PM EST, to apply the tag.

 

 

 

 

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