Getty Packers potential safety target Xavier McKinney
It is a good time to be in the market to hire a new safety. The Packers, certainly, are in that boat, with their Top 3 safeties—Darnell Savage, Jonathan Owens and Rudy Ford—all hitting free agency. There’s a big hole on the back end of the defense, and Green Bay will need to fill it.
And they could have a nice entryway to one of the top safeties on the market: Giants star Xavier McKinney, a former second-round pick out of Alabama who had three interceptions and 11 passes defended last season. The Alabama connection could be important—the Packers just hired Derrick Ansley to be the defensive pass-game coordinator, and Ansley was Alabama’s defensive-backs coach during McKinney’s freshman season.
McKinney said he has not spoken to Ansley recently, but that he is “intrigued” by possibly reconnecting with him.
“It’s been a while since I talked to him,” McKinney said on the “Up & Adams” podcast this week. “I talked to him when he was with the Chargers, this was like a couple years ago, we went out and played them. I talked to him out on the field. But I actually didn’t even know that he was (with the Packers). I thought he was still with the Chargers. So, when I saw that news, I was kind of intrigued a little bit because I had no clue that he was there.”
Xavier McKinney in Line for 4 Years, $54 Million?
He is, indeed, there and though McKinney and Ansley are not exactly close, the familiarity should help the Packers in their pursuit of McKinney, if that is the direction they decide to go. It seems they should go in that direction. McKinney had an overall defensive grade of 87.8 from Pro Football Focus last year, which was No. 4 among all safeties.
And while an impressive array of safeties—Quandre Diggs, Kevin Byard, Justin Simmons, Jordan Poyer—have been dumped onto the market in the past week, McKinney is uniquely attractive to the young Packers because he is only 24 and very much within the timeline of the team’s development.
The Giants did not franchise-tag McKinney, which would have given him $17 million for next season, and the shifting market probably makes that wise. Spotrac projects McKinny to warrant a five-year, $52 million contract, and PFF has him slightly higher, at four years and $54 million.
Packers Could Get Good Value at Safety
Like many, McKinney is somewhat baffled by the sudden axing of so many quality safeties this offseason. Again, it benefits teams because the safety market is expected to endure a bit of a depression, much the way the running back market has. But it will mean players like McKinney get less than they’re expecting.
“I honestly don’t know what’s going on with just kind of the league in general with the whole safety thing and everybody getting released,” McKinney said.
“It’s kind of mind-boggling to me a little bit, especially seeing what the league is turning into as far as it being a passing league. Just kind of seeing these DBs these past couple of days get released – star safeties, star corners, guys that are just getting released. It’s kind of ridiculous to me. But we’ll see what happens.”