Philadelphia Eagles Free Agent Profile: Safety Da’Norris Searcy

Statistics

Let’s get the boring statistics out the way first. Last season, Searcy played in 15 games, finishing with 65 tackles, 5 passes defended, 3 interceptions and 1 forced fumble. The previous season he played in 16 games, finishing with 71 tackles, 3.5 sacks, 7 passes defended and 1 interception which he returned for a touchdown.

Now let’s get a little bit more advanced using the wonderful guys at Pro Football Focus. Pro Football Focus ranked Searcy as the 18th best safety in the NFL last year with a grade of +8.6. Malcolm Jenkins ranked below Searcy at 19 with a grade of +8.3. Nate Allen was 28th with a grade of +3.9.

Many Eagles writers seem to think Searcy is strictly a strong safety who plays in the box and therefore won’t fit our scheme but this is unfair. I’ll give loads of examples over the next few pages of Searcy playing outside the box. Luckily for us Pro Football Focus can tell us how often Searcy played inside the box compared to other Eagles safeties.

On run snaps, Searcy spent 41.6% of his snaps inside the box. In comparison Malcolm Jenkins spent 47.9% of his snaps inside the box and Nate Allen spent 44.5%. So the argument that he’s solely a box safety doesn’t make any sense, he spends a similar amount of time inside the box as the Eagles current safeties.

Stats show that Searcy is a great tackler too. He missed only 3 tackles all season, Allen missed 4 in comparison and Jenkins missed 7. Searcy made 15 defensive stops in the run game, in comparison Jenkins made 9 stops and Allen made only 4.

The issue with Searcy is in coverage however. He was only targeted 19 times last season as he rarely played man coverage. He did however only give up 9 receptions on those 19 targets for 89 yards and no touchdown. In the Bills defense he wasn’t asked to man cover a lot, he’ll have to do that for the Eagles a lot more if he signed here.

Then again, can he be worse than Nate Allen in coverage? Allen was targeted 36 times and gave up 24 receptions for 420 yards and 5 touchdowns.

Next: Film Study