Safety (gridiron football position)
American and Canadian football defensive position
Safety (S), historically known as a safetyman, is a position in gridiron football on the defense. The safeties are defensive backs who line up ten to fifteen yards from the line of scrimmage. There are two variations of the position: the free safety (FS) and the strong safety (SS). Their duties depend on the defensive scheme. The defensive responsibilities of the safety and cornerback usually involve pass coverage towards the middle and sidelines of the field. While American (11-player) formations generally use two safeties, Canadian (12-player) formations generally have one safety and two defensive halfbacks, a position not used in the American game.
As professional and college football have become more focused on the passing game, safeties have become more involved in covering the eligible pass receivers.
Safeties are the last line of defense, and as such are expected to be reliable tacklers. Many safeties rank among the hardest hitters in football history. Safety positions can also be converted cornerbacks, either by design (Byron Jones) or as a cornerback ages (Rod and Charles Woodson, DeAngelo Hall, Lardarius Webb, Tramon Williams).
“Safety (gridiron football position)” enters the record as american and Canadian football defensive position. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Safety, gridiron and football can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Safety (gridiron football position)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.