Can the safety room that was purposefully built to stop the run handle all other aspects of the position?
While the praise for the Carolina Panthers offseason has been plentiful, there’s one aspect of the team’s roster decisions that continues to confound fans and media alike: what are the Panthers planning to do at the safety position?
Even as the NFL continues its shift towards position-less football, it’s still common for the roster builders across the league to keep to the traditional strong and free safety positions. One player taking the hard-nosed, close to the line of scrimmage enforcer role while the free safety is the playmaking ball hawk who acts as the last line of defense to prevent anyone on the offense from getting on top of the defense.
The Seattle Disconnection
No team exemplified this dynamic more than the Seattle Seahawks of the early 2010s, who had Earl Thomas and Kam Chancellor, both arguably the best free and strong safety in the NFL. Panthers Head Coach Dave Canales even had a front row seat to witness their glory as he had to go against it every day at practice as an offensive position coach with the Seahawks.
Despite Canales’ formative years in the NFL being exposed to the Seattle Cover 3 system and the epitome of traditional safety play, he and the rest of the brain trust with the Panthers have seemed to eschew that line of thinking in favor of a more versatile philosophy when it comes to safeties.
By versatile, I mean practically identical skill sets where each player is virtually interchangeable with the others. With multiple offseasons’ worth of opportunities for the Panthers to try and find a traditional free safety, they’ve gone the exact opposite direction. With each version of the roster they continue to forgo diversity and opt towards safeties with increasingly similar skill sets, strengths and weaknesses.
The current build
The Panthers entered the offseason with Demani Richardson as the only safety on the roster. A second year player who started out as a UDFA, Richardson was easily the Panthers most reliable tackler during the back half of the season, posting the team’s highest PFF tackling grade for the season among players with over 50 snaps on defense. When asked to cover, Richardson did seem to struggle much more compared to when he’s given the opportunity to play downhill. This was no more evident than in the 2025 season finale, where Richardson was asked to take on his heaviest coverage assignment of the season. Versus the Atlanta Falcons in the season finale, Richardson played much of the game as the primary nickelback and in 39 snaps in coverage scored a 31.9 coverage grade.
Entering free agency, it was a surprise to no one paying attention that the Panthers had signed a safety for a big money (relative to the rest of the safety market) in Tre’Von Moehrig. Moehrig had a career year in 2024, in no large part to how he was deployed on the Raiders defense. According to PFF, Moehrig played 600 snaps at free safety and 326 in the box in 2023. The next year, his career year, his snaps at free safety dropped down to 361 to allow for him to move closer to the line of scrimmage more often with a jump to 439 snaps inside the box. This shift to allow Moehrig to be closer to the football paid heavy dividends and Moehrig was one of, if not the, best tackling safety in the NFL last year while but was average at his best in coverage.
With both Moehrig and Richardson seemingly have similar paths to success on a defense, it seemed as though the Panthers might finally look to address a need for a ball-hawking safety in the NFL draft. There were options aplenty in the safety class, so in round 4 of the draft no one was surprised they drafted a safety – but which safety they drafted was a shock for some.
The Panthers selected Lathan Ransom, a safety from Ohio State. A tough and tenacious player, Ransom led the entire NCAA safety class in 2024 in PFF’s run defense grade but was in the 29th percentile at coverage grade at free safety.
There is still room for moves, but is there interest?
With other options still available to potentially add a safety whose calling card lay more in their coverage ability, the Panthers have held tight and not added any other safeties outside of undrafted free agency. Returning special teamer Nick Scott, who hasn’t been a highly productive in any aspect when provided opportunities to play defense. The Panthers even brought in Julian Blackmon for a free agent visit, but he left without a contract as the Panthers seemed happy with what they had. Blackmon went unsigned for several more weeks until the NFC South rival New Orleans Saints picked him up.
So here the Panthers are, with just three potential starters at safety. All of whom have found the most success when given the option to play down hill towards the football and have struggled when asked to play significant snaps in coverage. Three players who in their most recent seasons (Richardson and Moehrig in the NFL, Ransom in the NCAA) combined for a total of 4 interceptions and 3 forced fumbles.
As defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero is entering the final year of his contract, this is seemingly his final opportunity to put something together. It’s time to find out if Evero can help the Panthers finally vindicate their unique safety philosophy, or if the continued lack of diversity will be a contributing factor to yet another lackluster defense