Holy shit, I always knew Wells was stupid, but he clearly has no understanding of football at all. Hooker and Collins really do not play the same position at all.

I would be ok with Amos. He can lay the wood and play deep safety. He is a different kind of safety than Collins though and can play more deep coverage. If they went after Amos instead of Collins that would tell me they expect more coverage out of the position and less in the box run defense. Depends what kind of 4-3 we are emulating, something like the Seattle defense, or something like the Cowboys or old Bucs.

Exactly. FREE safety and STRONG safety are two distinct positions, especially in this defense. Much like Earl Thomas and Kam Chancellor played two completely different positions, Landon Collins would play a completely different position than Malik Hooker. Hopefully the latter duo turns out as well as the former if the Colts sign Collins.

Wells was arguing that safety positions are indistinguishable from each other in their responsibilities now. But that isn't quite the case with our D. Which he should know. Sometimes they do mix it up with Hooker and Geathers, but most of the time they wanted Hooker to play the deep defense.

He is just a weird dude. Even going back to his stampede blue days. He would get in these weird arguments with fans all the time. Guy is just a strange angry ginger.

Don’t forget the importance of open field tackling on short passes. Consistently taking away those yards will make QB hold the ball longer and give the pass rush more time.

Collins is by far the better tackler. Guy is a machine. PFF even wrote an article saying he should be moved to linebacker.

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Apparently I’m on to something

Thank you. As far as your first point is concerned, to be fair the RBs Gettleman drafted (Saquon Barkley and Christian McCaffrey) have worked out pretty well, so it's hard to fault him for those picks - particularly if he wasn't enamored with any of the available QBs in last year's draft. If the guy was making wild picks and reaching for players instead of taking obvious upgrades, then I'd place less weight in his decision making. So while I don't question that you're right that this decision comes from the GM, it doesn't really address my original question of whether the decision he made (not to tag Collins) causes any concern. From what I've read (and admittedly it's a fairly small amount of info - I knew next to nothing about Gettlemen until this thread was created), the guy isn't afraid to make unpopular decisions, but they are often proven right in retrospect. So I remain concerned about this.

As far as the importance of the safety position in our defense, I'll defer to you and others who are more knowledgeable than me about the X's and O's. I can accept that a good SS may be more valuable to us than to other teams, but that should mean that the other teams won't be willing to pay top dollar for him, and we should be able to get him more cheaply. Ultimately, it's really a question of how much to pay, rather than whether to sign him. Here's an article I came across when looking up Gettleman info which makes the observation that 7 of 8 best paid safeties are free safeties and that strong safeties are usually paid much less:

https://www.bigblueview.com/2019/3/6...dave-gettleman

So by paying Collins as one of the best paid safeties in the league, we'd be shattering precedent more than most realize. It bears noting that this sort of thing worked out pretty well when we drafted Nelson, of course.

Shattering precedent? The Colts made Bob Sanders one of the highest paid safeties in the NFL.