Five safeties available in the draft should be able to start as rookies -- and it's possible that only two of them will be drafted in the first round.
NFL Media draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah tweeted early Tuesday morning that he thought Louisville's Calvin Pryor, Alabama's Ha Ha Clinton-Dix, Northern Illinois' Jimmie Ward, Washington State's Deone Bucannon and Florida State's Terence Brooks "should start from day one." Only Clinton-Dix and Pryor are seen as first-round picks, with Bucannon and Ward generally seen as second-round selections and Brooks as a second- or third-round pick.
Three of those players show up in Jeremiah's list of the top 50 prospects in this draft: Pryor at No. 15, Clinton-Dix at No. 16 and Ward at No. 45. This draft is especially deep at wide receiver, with nine in the top 50, which pushes the talented safeties down a bit.
Being able to get a safety in the second round who is good enough to start as a rookie likely is great news for teams such as the Arizona Cardinals, Baltimore Ravens, Chicago Bears, Dallas Cowboys, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings and St. Louis Rams. Those teams have obvious needs at safety, but have just-as-obvious needs elsewhere. The number of starting-caliber safeties will mean that some of those teams will bypass safeties in the first round, then try to grab one in the second round. But that also adds some intrigue to the middle of the second round: Seven of those teams (all but Minnesota) draft between 12th and 21st in that round, which could lead to a mini-run on safeties.
Brooks (5-foot-11, 198 pounds) probably is talked about the least among Jeremiah's quintet. After serving as a backup corner and special-teams player in his first two seasons at FSU, he was a full-time starter at free safety in his final two seasons for the Seminoles. He is both fast -- he ran a 4.42 in the 40 at the combine, including an unofficial 10-yard split of 1.50 seconds -- and physical, and developed the needed consistency as a senior. His 40 time was the fastest of the safeties at the combine. Brooks covers a lot of ground and finished his career with five interceptions and 15 pass breakups. He had eight tackles for loss as a senior, when FSU played a more aggressive style of defense under then-coordinator Jeremy Pruitt.
NFL Media draft analyst Bucky Brooks recently unveiled a two-round mock draft, and he had Clinton-Dix (to St. Louis at No. 13) and Pryor (to Dallas at No. 16) in the first round and Bucannon (to Pittsburgh at No. 46) and Ward (to Chicago at No. 51) in the second round. NFL Network analyst Curtis Conway has said he thinks Bucannon is worthy of a first-round selection.
Mike Huguenin can be reached at mike.huguenin@nfl.com. You also can follow him on Twitter @MikeHuguenin.
