Second- and third-year NFL players ready to break out in 2021: Defense edition

Safety – Xavier McKinney

McKinney was my top-ranked safety last year and the 20th overall prospect, not because he was the most rangy guy on the back end or the best slot defender singularly, but the most complete player at the position in my opinion, being a legitimate plus one in the box, having quality man-coverage reps against tight-ends, tackling in very effective fashion and just showing great football IQ all-around.

He was drafted as such, but not until the fourth pick of the second round in a safety class that lacked any true headliners. From my tier one, with McKinney, LSU’s Grant Delpit and Minnesota’s Antoine Winfield, it was the latter who everybody put on alert with his evaluation, since he had an extensive injury history in college.

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Delpit missed all year with a torn Achilles, and McKinney didn’t make his debut until week 12, having surgery on a broken foot before the season started. Even though he didn’t rack up big numbers during that limited stretch, going back to the tape, I’m very encouraged by what I saw and stand by my college evaluations.

So, the former Crimson Tide standout was limited to just six games as a rookie, officially starting four of those (210 total snaps). The stats look rather underwhelming overall - 25 total tackles - across the board for TFLs, interceptions and pass deflections.

Looking at the advanced numbers, he was charged with 13 targets and allowed all but one of those to be completed, but for less than 100 yards and no touchdowns. And once again, like I just mentioned with Juan Thornhill, the numbers can be somewhat deceiving. At six feet, right around 200 pounds, McKinney has the kind of body type and mental capacity to be versatile, although his role in season one was fairly simplistic.

With a full year of familiarity in defensive coordinator Patrick Graham's sytem, I expect that to change.

I thought McKinney looked a little smaller in that Giants jersey, but he also moved more easily. He basically played slot safety for Big Blue as a rook. I expected Logan Ryan to take on that role, but when they had McKinney, they actually played him closer to the line of scrimmage and covering in the nickel instead, with plenty of it spent in man-coverage.

From that spot, he patiently reads the hips of receivers from the trail position, while keeping the opponent at arm’s reach, and is light on his feet to stop with him on the break. That really impressed me when I saw him go from 60 to zero in the blink of an eye and not overshoot routes.

He had a bunch of high-quality coverage snaps against fellow rookie receiver CeeDee Lamb of the Dallas Cowboys in the final game of the season. The stat sheet will ultimately say that he allowed all four targets his way to be completed, but a basically indefensible back-shoulder pass made up for 21 of the 40 yards, then he was capped over the top as a safety on another one and actually held a corner route to minimal yardage from his position, plus he was charged with a couple of bubble screens – one of which he totally blew up. Oh, and then, of course, he came up with the game-sealing move in the end-zone later.

He did see some usage as a deep safety as well.

McKinney positions himself well in-between routes, but shows a rapid trigger in two-high shells, with excellent short-area burst. That also shows up when covering the flats, which he was often asked to do as a rookie, as he can take a couple of side-steps with a vertical route and then shoot down on somebody coming underneath.

He was rolled into the deep middle a few times, where it just looks very fluid and clean how he starts in a parallel stance, opens to the post and then squares his shoulders again for a straight pedal backwards, to go along with just leveraging himself correctly and not overcommitting for the most part.

As a rookie, he was already excellent at setting the edge in the run game, but then also nicely filled lanes opening up, for example when the offense had a sift block on the backside and he became responsible for the C-gap in theory. He has some slipperiness to work around offensive linemen and rips through the reach of receivers trying to wall him off.

Giants DC Patrick Graham likes to put dime personnel on the field, where McKinney ends up in the box quite a bit, like when the slot receiver to his side motions across the formation and he shifts in as the second stack-linebacker basically. I expected him to do quite a bit of that in sub-packages. He was also blitzed off the nickel quite a bit and displayed good pursuit.

McKinney is just a really strong wrap-up tackler, which already stood out to me at Alabama and it has translated to the pros, with just one missed tackle his rookie year. You saw a couple of times this past season, him being all by himself with a ton of grass to cover, and he stays so calm, forcing the ball-carrier to step out of bounds, using the sideline as a 12th defender.

This is one of those things where I’m really high on a player, he gets injured, not a lot of people see him play at all and his name is kind of lost, especially with Antoine Winfield and Jeremy Chinn having strong rookie seasons.

With the knowledge that we have now, if I get them in their specific roles, which for Chinn is still in the work I would say, I might take those two ahead of McKinney, but as an all-around player, McKinney is still my top choice.

Once again, I really liked what I saw from him covering guys in the slot one-on-one, plus he can play bigger than his size indicates when rotating into the box, he shows an innate feel for playing in-between routes in zone and he has the smarts to fulfill several different roles for this versatile defense.

I wouldn’t expect him to be up there with the league-leaders in interceptions, but I could see something like 80 tackles, three picks, six or seven PBUs, three sacks, a couple of forced fumbles and he’ll also pick up at least as many, by just being around the ball. He could become the Alabama safety Giants fans hoped they’d get with Landon Collins.