2WC0KW2 Los Angeles Chargers safety Derwin James Jr. (3) takes his stance during an NFL football game against the Kansas City Chiefs, Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, in Inglewood, Calif. (AP Photo/Kyusung Gong)
• Deployment and consistency provide the most confidence at the top of the rankings: These traits can be hard to find at such a volatile position, but there are a select few who hold the edge above all others.
• Allowing alignment projections and past production history to fuel the ranks: Projecting ideal IDP usage and incorporating tackles versus expected helps guide these 2024 rankings.
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Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes
Breaking fantasy football rankings down into tiers helps fantasy managers better understand what separates each group and how to value each player at the position for this coming season.
Referenced scoring uses the settings below, with a link to all point leaders for 2022 and 2023 (min. 100 defensive snaps) here.
Leading the defensive backs in 2024, once again, is the most consistent and reliable producer at the position in Derwin James, who is coming off three straight seasons as a top-five IDP safety. He is also the league’s only safety to finish top-five in tackles versus expected in each of the past three seasons, and even with a new coaching staff coming in, there are no concerns about his potential path to production as a player that can and will see high-efficiency alignments for IDP and doesn’t disappoint when given those opportunities.
Jaquan Brisker has also emerged over the past two years as a high-end tackler for the position with IDP-friendly alignments to bank on for consistent IDP production. The Chicago Bears also project as one of the more ideal IDP safety deployments heading into this season, which is good news for Brisker who has thrived around the line of scrimmage, playing 44% of his defensive snaps in the box last season.
Antoine Winfield Jr. will be a lot of IDP managers’ first defensive back off the board, and understandably so after he finished as the top-scoring overall player at his position in 2023. Winfield doesn’t necessarily project for the same ideal usage as James or Brisker, or even a lot of the other names in this top tier, but his ability to be productive in different ways keeps him in this range, even if he shouldn’t be expected to repeat as S1 this season.
Brian Branch is coming off a rookie season where he wasn’t fully unleashed from a snaps perspective but still produced CB3 numbers overall and was CB2 in points per game. Branch should be expected to see a larger workload this season while also potentially filling in with some safety snaps, according to some early offseason reports. A true full-time role playing nickel corner and strong safety is exactly what Branch needs to be in contention for a repeat DB1-type season for IDP.
Julian Blackmon, Jeremy Chinn and Josh Metellus all project for some of the best IDP safety alignments at the position heading into this season, giving them a great chance to be among the best tacklers at the position Blackmon’s role as the strong safety in Gus Bradley’s defense resulted in 47% of his defensive snaps coming from the box last season. Josh Metellus was essentially the second linebacker in Brian Flores’ defense in 2023, playing 92% of his snaps around the line of scrimmage (box, slot, defensive line), which is as good as it gets for IDP. And Jeremy Chinn is set for a bounce-back type season after hardly seeing the field last year in Carolina. He steps in as the starting strong safety in Dan Quinn’s Washington Commanders defense, which projects as one of the more ideal tackling deployments heading into 2024.
Minkah Fitzpatrick, Xavier McKinney and Jessie Bates aren’t likely to see those ideal IDP alignments so there should be some tempered expectations for them on a weekly basis in terms of tackle potential. However, all three safeties have shown an ability to deliver for IDP as some of the top performers in tackles versus expected last season and are going to be highly sought-after options in drafts this offseason.
Nate Hobbs and Devon Witherspoon are the next cornerbacks to mix in with the safeties as some of the best tackling options at the position. They play in the slot, which is ultimately going to be more reliable year-to-year than banking on repeating big plays. Hobbs and Witherspoon both ranked among the top 95th percentile at the position in tackles versus expected, and along with Branch, are the best bets to lead the position in tackle production in 2024.
The first safeties in this tier — Rayshawn Jenkins, Camryn Bynum, Donovan Wilson and Brandon Jones — all have reasons for optimism in IDP this season but with slightly tempered expectations at the same time. Jenkins’ role in Seattle projects as the most tackle-friendly deployment of the four, but he was also the most ineffective tackler of the four last season, delivering 7.3 tackles below expected in 2023. Bynum, Wilson and Jones were some of the most effective tacklers at the position last season, but their roles don’t project as strongly heading into 2024, which could drag those tackle totals down quite a bit from last season.
More strong tackling corners help fill out this tier with Taron Johnson, Kenny Moore, Christian Gonzalez, L’Jarius Sneed and Trent McDuffie. Sneed and Gonzalez are the lone outside corners to make the tier and become a bit riskier in this range as a result. However, both players were strong performers in points per game and tackles versus expected last season, albeit for Gonzalez on a small sample size.
There are still plenty of starting safeties in this tier, highlighting the depth of the position. Any one of these players can emerge as a top-12 IDP by the end of the year if things go their way. Big plays often tend to swing the position’s point leaders significantly but as unstable metrics to chase year-to-year, they should not be weighed heavily in rankings.
With that in mind, fading the position and grabbing the players in this tier as second or third starting options for fantasy lineups in 2024 is the best way to approach the safety position in IDP. None of the safeties in this tier necessarily project for strong production roles or have been overly effective recent tacklers at the position, so that hurts their chances and rankings at this point, but there’s so much variance with the position that they are well worth taking shots on here for the chance to emerge.
The cornerbacks in this tier were all above average in terms of tackles versus expected last season, and as a result, they were among the better points-per-game producers for the position as well. It’s worth noting that DaRon Bland finished as the overall CB1 last year but should not be drafted that highly for 2024 coming off the back of some very non-repeatable pick-six production. It’s fine to draft him, but this is about the earliest range to do so to avoid getting caught in an obvious regression trap.
The final tier continues with more expected full-time safeties heading into this season, and much like the previous tier, all have strong shots at outperforming expectations by being on the right side of variance this season, with full-time snaps being their greatest assets in helping them get there.
The same can be said for the corners in this final tier as they’ve at least had some history of being effective at such an unstable position. It’s a larger group to choose from and they’re ranked with a combination of past production and opportunity in mind to round out the final tier.
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