Safety First

The Bengals are awful at safety. Awful. We all know this. But how do we solve it? Free agency? Draft? Probably neither, since Mike Brown sucks. But we can always imagine, right?

A lot of folks talk about moving a backup corner to safety, like Brandon Ghee or Morgan Trent. My question: why not one of the three starting-quality guys?

Hear me out. Assuming we re-sign Johnathan Joseph (not necessarily a safe assumption, I know), we'll be back to having three starting-quality corners in 2011: Joseph, Leon Hall and PacMan Jones. Ghee and Trent are nice backups. Instead of comparing them to find out which one's best, and then just throw one of them out as a safety, let's talk strengths and weaknesses for the three really talented defensive backs

Hall is a great corner down low. He can stick to his man like glue on short routes, and has the physical ability to muscle with anyone, make tackles and break up passes. He's slow for a DB, though. He gets burned on deep balls a lot (see: Roddy White, every game he's played against San Diego). He'd be a hit-or-miss safety. We've definitely seen him make interceptions on deep balls before in those cases in which he sticks with the route. He's a ball-hawker, but a big risk. Could be worth it with the other two at corner, and he also tackles runners well, which fills a huge hole for us at safety.

PacMan: He'd be OK, honestly, but I think he's better as a No. 2 corner or nickel corner. He's lightning fast and can make plays on the ball, but I think he could get burned too. He might not have the instincts for safety, but then again, maybe he does. I have a hard time predicting how he'd do, but with the dynamic duo at corner, it might be really interesting. I don't know if he tackles well enough for the position.

JonJo: Athletic, fast, has it all, but doesn't stick to his receivers like Hall. We saw that in that pathetic touchdown by Colston. However, he can also shut down the deep routes, and he gets interceptions. He locked down on Randy Moss, and he can go with any deep pass-catcher in the league. He can make the tackles on runners who reach the secondary, and he has the instincts it takes. Why not him? Solves two problems.

So yea, I think that instead of using a valuable draft pick on this much-needed position, the organization should use the resources at hand. All three starting-quality corners would make decent safeties, but I'd rank them like this: Joseph, Hall, Jones.