We have a theory, and we want you to sit with it for a second before you send us an angry email about it.
The safety position is the most cognitively demanding position in football. Not one of the most demanding. THE most demanding. More than quarterback. We said it. We’re not taking it back. We have reasons and also possibly too much free time.
Here’s the argument: a quarterback has to read the defense pre-snap and make a decision with the ball post-snap. That’s hard. We’ve written approximately 47 articles about why that’s hard. But the quarterback’s reads are largely predetermined. The play call gives him a primary read, a progression, a hot route, and a check-down. The coverage tells him which branch of his decision tree to follow. He’s executing a flowchart at high speed, and yes, the speed is what makes it elite, but the structure exists before the snap.
A safety has to do all of that in reverse, without a play call telling him what’s coming, while also being responsible for run fits, deep coverage, underneath zones, blitz assignments, communication to the entire secondary, AND he has to do it while reading the quarterback’s eyes to figure out which branch of that flowchart the offense chose. The quarterback knows the play. The safety has to figure it out in real time.
And then he has to go hit somebody.
We’ve been watching Colorado safety film for the better part of two months, and we’re now fully prepared to die on this hill: the way Colorado (and honestly the entire country) evaluates high school safeties is fundamentally broken, and it’s costing kids opportunities they deserve.
The Problem with How We Scout Safeties
Pull up any recruiting database. Search for Colorado safeties. Sort by star rating. You know what the top results have in common?
Speed. That’s it. Speed and interceptions.
That’s how safeties get recruited. That’s the whole model. Can he run? Did he catch some picks? Great. Four stars. Move along.
This is like evaluating a quarterback by how far he can throw the ball and how many touchdowns he has. You’d never do that (we hope, although honestly some of you might, and if so, please read our QB evaluation archives immediately). You’d want to know if the kid can read coverages, work through progressions, make anticipation throws, process under pressure. You’d want to know what’s happening between his ears, not just what’s happening with his arm.
But safeties? Nah. Fast and caught some picks. That’s the eval. Move along.
The result is predictable: Colorado produces safeties who test well at camps, look great in shorts, and then get to college and can’t play because they have no idea where to be or why they’re supposed to be there. Meanwhile, the 5’11” 185-pound kid at a 3A school who runs a 4.65 but has never, not once, been out of position on film gets zero looks because his 40 time starts with a 4.6 and his interception total is modest because (here’s the thing that blows people’s minds) elite safeties in well-coached defenses don’t get a ton of interceptions because quarterbacks stop throwing at them.
Read that last part again. We’ll wait.
A safety who racks up 8 interceptions in a season is either (a) generationally gifted at reading quarterback eyes and making plays on the ball, or (b) playing against quarterbacks who can’t read coverage and keep throwing into his zone anyway. Option B is way, way, WAY more common at the high school level, especially in Colorado’s smaller classifications where the quarterback across the field might be a converted running back who’s been throwing for six months.
Interception totals without context are noise. We said what we said.
What an Elite Safety Actually Does (Spoiler: Most of It Is Invisible)
We isolated 200 snaps from six Colorado safeties across three classifications last season. Three of the six had D1 interest based on measurables and production. Three did not. Then we tracked every snap for specific cognitive markers and the results were, shall we say, illuminating enough that we considered printing them on a billboard outside the state athletic association’s office (which, as we’ve noted before, might be the most frustrating organization imaginable, but that’s a different article).
Here’s what we tracked:
Is the safety aligned correctly for the called coverage before the snap? This sounds basic. It is not basic. It requires the safety to identify the offensive formation, communicate any strength or motion adjustments to the cornerbacks and the other safety, check his own assignment against the coverage call, and get to his landmark. All of this has to happen in the 15-20 seconds between the offensive formation set and the snap.
The three safeties with D1 interest? Correct alignment on about 81% of snaps. The three without? 94%.
Yeah. The kids nobody is recruiting were aligned correctly more often than the kids everybody wants.
How quickly does the safety react to run or pass after the snap? This is the safety equivalent of what we track as “first step accuracy” for linebackers (and if you haven’t read that piece yet, go do that, it’s one of our favorites and also it will make you angry, which is sort of our brand). We measured from the snap to the safety’s first decisive step toward either run support or pass coverage depth.
The D1 group averaged 0.72 seconds. The non-D1 group averaged 0.58 seconds.
The “slower” kids by 40 time triggered faster on film by almost fifteen hundredths of a second. Where have we heard this before? (It was the linebacker article. We literally wrote this exact same finding about linebackers. It’s almost like cognitive processing speed matters more than foot speed across multiple positions. Weird how that keeps happening.)
This one is harder to track on film because you can’t always hear what’s being said, but you can see it. A safety who’s communicating is pointing, signaling, physically directing cornerbacks before the snap. A safety who isn’t communicating is standing in his spot waiting for the ball to be snapped.
Of the 200 snaps we watched, the non-D1 group showed visible communication on 73% of snaps. The D1 group showed visible communication on 41% of snaps.
Which means the kids getting recruited are also the kids whose cornerbacks are getting less help pre-snap. That seems... not ideal for a defense?
When the safety reads run, does he fill the correct gap? Not “does he make the tackle” (that’s a result, not a process). Does he attack the right gap with the right leverage? This is where we lost our minds watching film, because one of the non-D1 safeties — a kid at a 4A school whose Hudl has fewer views than our least-read article (and our least-read article is about punt coverage, so that’s saying something) — filled the correct run gap on 96% of run snaps. Ninety-six percent. We went back and counted twice because we thought we’d made an error. We had not made an error. This kid is playing a video game where he already knows the answers. He reads the offensive line, identifies the run scheme, and fills the gap before the running back gets there. Every. Single. Time.
His 40 time is reportedly 4.7. He has zero offers. We are going to scream into a pillow now.
Why Interceptions Lie and “Tackles” Lie Worse
Let’s kill two sacred cows at once because we’re already here and the farmer’s not watching.
Interceptions at the high school level measure the intersection of (a) the safety’s ball skills, (b) the quarterback’s decision-making, and (c) how often offenses throw near the safety. An elite safety who communicates coverage rotations correctly and aligns properly will see FEWER targets because quarterbacks learn not to throw to his side. His reward for being excellent is a stat line that looks mediocre. Meanwhile, the safety who’s out of position on 30% of snaps but is fast enough to recover and make a play on the ball when the QB throws into the window he accidentally created looks like a ball hawk. His reward for being inconsistent is an impressive interception total and a recruiting profile that says “playmaker.”
We are not making this up. We’ve seen it. On film. Repeatedly. In Colorado. This season.
Tackle totals are arguably even more misleading for safeties. A safety making a lot of tackles means one of two things: either the defense in front of him is failing to contain plays at the first and second levels (which means he’s cleaning up messes, not creating stops), or he’s a run-support safety who’s in the box a lot (which is a scheme role, not a skill indicator). High tackle totals for a free safety are often a red flag, not a green one. It means the ball is getting to the third level way too often.
The safety who doesn’t show up on the stat sheet is often the safety who’s doing his job. He’s in the right place, so the quarterback doesn’t throw there. The run gets bottled up before it reaches him because he communicated the right fit to the linebacker. The play-action doesn’t fool him because he read the offensive line’s pass set instead of the fake, so there’s no highlight-reel recovery because there’s nothing to recover from. He’s the defensive equivalent of the check-down quarterback: doing the right thing every snap, building no highlights, generating no recruiting buzz.
This is the fundamental evaluation problem, and it’s the same one we keep writing about in different uniforms. Colorado’s scouting infrastructure (such as it is) rewards results over process. Interceptions over alignment. Tackles over gap discipline. Speed over trigger time. And the kids who do the job right, every snap, without the flashy results, end up at the wrong level or no level at all.
The Quarterback Parallel (And Why This Should Sound Familiar)
If you’ve been reading PrepZone for any length of time, you already know where this is going, because we’ve made this exact argument about every position we’ve profiled this offseason. But we’re going to make it one more time for the safeties because they might be the single most extreme example of the problem.
A quarterback who throws 30 touchdowns against bad competition gets more recruiting attention than a quarterback who completes 65% against good competition while making correct pre-snap reads on 90% of snaps. We’ve written about this. The processing matters more than the production.
A linebacker who racks up 100 tackles because he’s fast enough to clean up misreads gets more attention than a linebacker who makes 60 tackles because his correct first step means he’s making plays at the line instead of seven yards downfield. We’ve written about this too. The diagnosis matters more than the tackle total.
A safety who gets 6 interceptions because he’s fast and QBs keep testing him gets more attention than a safety who gets 2 interceptions because QBs stop throwing at him by Week 4. We’re writing about it now. The coverage discipline matters more than the box score.
It’s the same article. We keep writing the same article. We’re going to keep writing it until somebody listens or until we run out of positions. (We will not run out of positions. We haven’t even gotten to punters yet, and oh buddy, we have THOUGHTS about Colorado punting.)
The Film Test: Five Snaps That Tell You Everything
If you’re a coach, parent, or recruiter evaluating a Colorado safety this offseason, here are five specific plays to look for on film. Not highlights. Random snaps. Just pick five and watch the safety.
Does the safety recognize the trips side and adjust his alignment? Does he communicate to the corner? Does the corner move after the safety talks to him? If yes, you’re watching a processor. If the safety stands in the same spot regardless of formation, you’re watching an athlete who’s been told “stand here” and does that really well.
Does the safety bite on the run fake or does he read the offensive line’s pass set and stay home? This is the single most diagnostic snap in safety evaluation. Play action is designed to exploit safeties who read the backfield instead of the line. A safety who reads the linemen’s feet instead of the running back’s will never bite on play action. Ever. Because the linemen can’t fake a run block and pass protect at the same time. The feet tell the truth.
Does the safety fill from depth at the correct angle, or does he take a bad angle and try to make up for it with speed? The correct fill is boring. It looks like a guy running to a spot that nobody else is at. The bad angle is exciting because it creates a chase and maybe a big hit if the safety is fast enough to recover. Coaches love the big hit. We love the correct angle. We are not the same.
Where is the safety aligned? Is he cheating toward his responsibility in the coverage, or is he in no-man’s land? Third and medium is a stress snap for safeties because the offense could run, throw short, or throw deep, and the safety’s alignment has to honor all three without committing to any of them. The elite ones find a depth and leverage that lets them trigger downhill on a run, drive on a short throw, or carry a vertical. The average ones pick one and hope.
This is our favorite. What does the safety do on the snap AFTER a momentum play? Does he stay disciplined, or does he get overaggressive because the adrenaline is pumping and try to make another play? The best safeties play the same way on every snap regardless of what happened on the last one. Emotional discipline is cognitive discipline, and the safety who starts gambling after a pick because he wants another one is going to give up a 60-yard touchdown within three snaps. We have seen this on film so many times it’s basically a PrepZone drinking game at this point. (We don’t actually have a drinking game. We have a spreadsheet. It’s less fun but more useful.)
What We’re Asking Colorado to Do
Same thing we ask every time. Look at the film. Not the stats. Not the measurables. Not the highlight tape set to whatever Travis Scott song your kid picked. The film.
The 4.7 safety with 96% run-fit accuracy and zero offers can play college football. We’d bet our entire operation on it (our entire operation is a website, two AI voices, and an obsession with football that our families tolerate with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but still). That kid’s brain is 0.5 seconds ahead of the offense on every snap. You can’t train that. You can train a kid to run faster. You can train a kid to be more physical. You cannot train a kid to read an offensive line, communicate a coverage rotation, trigger on the correct key, AND fill the right gap at the right angle on 96% of snaps. That’s processing. That’s the rarest trait in football. That’s the thing PrepZone exists to find.
And he’s sitting there. On Hudl. With his 4.7 forty and his 200 views and his modest stat line because quarterbacks stopped throwing at him in September.
Somebody give this kid a look. We’re begging.
Actually, we’re not begging. We’re telling you. And we’ll keep telling you until you listen.