I mean, draft picks aren't 2nd contracts... but I suspect you're saying that if the position is undervalued then why spend a pick in the 1-3 rounds on them. And an additional piece here is these picks were picked during Philips tenure and this sxs we're in now devalues them more (also, the front office too).
When I say "devalue" one of the pieces here is that we are generally not looking for a center fielder type which is a harder safety to find. We can get away with less talented safeties in general cause of how much we align with our safeties at depth and split.
Some of this has been schematic I think.
Phillips called it different on the back end than Staley, who was brought in to call quarters and install Fangio's defense. Still think some of that was so that McVay could see the rules in-house and learn how to beat the scheme, but either way changing the approach required different safety skill sets.
So Staley comes in and immediately drafts two safeties instead of sticking with the guys who Wade had chosen. He hits on one and misses on one, but Johnson takes to the scheme and result was that season we had our best safety play we've had in years with Fuller and Johnson.
I figure they let Johnson go because he wasn't a guy they identified as ideal in the new defense. Could also have simply been they didn't think he was worth the offer he got, which ended up being proved correct if that was the case. But then Staley gets hired away too, so the flux we had going on with the defensive changes adds to this equation I think.
Morris' biggest mistake was probably not trying to restack that secondary in how he wanted to call it, but to some extent I do think his calls were influenced by what he had. So him being short back there probably means he deserves blame (we don't know if he jumped on a table behind the scenes for more help back there, maybe he did), in terms of how the group was stacked in the offseason.
Either way we now have Fuller back this season so 1/2 of the quarters pairing is there at safety. These other guys we'll see who if any can step up in that scheme or whether we're looking at another year of careful calls. To some extent the corner quality will determine this too. This is why I say that on paper we look like we're probably a bit short at two spots, those being the safety spot opposite Fuller and then the third CB. But of course that could get worse with injury or better if one or two guys step up. So we're not too far away we just need everything to go our way which doesn't usually happen.
