NFL Draft
12/13/24
8 min read
Why Notre Dame's Xavier Watts Is Key To Staying Ahead Of NFL's Ever-Changing Defensive Trends
We don’t talk nearly enough about Notre Dame safety Xavier Watts.
This is one of the best players on one of the nation’s most historic college football programs, who are currently sitting at 11-1 with their ticket punched to the College Football Playoff.
No FBS defender has more interceptions in the last two seasons than Watts (12), and he won the 2023 Bronco Nagurski Award for the country’s best defender as a unanimous All-American. And, as of last week, he’s headed to the 2025 Reese’s Senior Bowl as a part of the best All-Star showcase of draft talent in the country.
So why the heck aren’t we talking more about him?
That dreaded phrase that so often keeps talent from going in the proportionate area of the NFL Draft may be to blame. This is the doing of “positional value.”
Watts isn’t the only safety this season who will have to battle positional value relative to their worth as a player — Malaki Starks of Georgia may well be one of the top eight players in this class. He’s unlikely to hear his name called in that range of the draft next April, regardless, because he plays safety.
But this is where I think Watts’ draft profile becomes a little bit more intriguing. He’s entering the league at a time when the league is reaching something of a tipping point. The dominoes of league-wide trends off of this season or a season in the near future could potentially turn Watts’ playing style into the kind of player that everybody wants instead of the position everyone is diminishing and hoping to find at a discount.
After so long of playing the game, there is little in the way of “new” concepts, just old concepts modernized or reimagined to be weaponized against the modern rules and styles of play. And, once enough of the league’s franchises decide to hop on board and zig with the trends, a handful of teams will be bold enough to zag and go the opposite direction.
These teams who dare to be bold in taking the path less traveled usually find themselves at the forefront of the next cycle and put opposing teams on their heels thanks to playing a brand and style of football that isn’t familiar to every other opponent.
Don’t look now, but the NFL’s cyclical nature is starting to turn a corner once again.
Defensive Trends Are Changing
Consider the defensive efforts to remove explosive plays from opposing offenses. Much was made at the beginning of the season about how scoring was down across the league and that 2-high safety shells had a great deal to do with it.
The trend has persisted deep into the season — the league’s Cover-3 rate is the lowest it has been in a single season since 2020, according to TruMedia. Cover 2 is up nearly 2 percent from last year across all defensive snaps and being played at the highest rate since at least 2019.
High usage of Cover 2 and the lowest responsibility of Cover 3 in the past half a decade means that safeties are being asked to cover less ground than they have at quite some time. With lesser ground to cover, the weight of responsibility becomes less, and the position, by extension, becomes devalued.
We saw this in free agency, too, where two veteran star safeties, Quandre Diggs and Justin Simmons, found little to no market for competitive pay. Both took significant pay cuts to play in 2024 after being handsomely paid by Seattle and Denver, respectively, for several seasons. Draft prospects aren’t the only defenders impacted by the positional value trend at safety.
With less ground to cover and more split field coverages that are tasked with capping routes and preventing throws, the value of the position has shrunk — unless you’re a freak athlete capable of playing a slew of spots at an elite level.
When will teams start zagging, though? If the successes of teams at the top of the conference standings this December are any indication, it could be sooner rather than later.
The best teams in the NFL this season by non-quarterback rush EPA are:
- Baltimore Ravens (8-5)
- Philadelphia Eagles (11-2)
- Washington Commanders (8-5)
- Detroit Lions (12-1)
- Tampa Bay Buccaneers (7-6)
All five teams have assembled successful running games with different DNAs. Some, like Baltimore and Philadelphia, spent handsomely on a marquee free agent running back to go with years of investments into the offensive line.
Others, like Detroit, invested heavily with a premium pick in a back, plus an expensive free agent addition to pack a 1-2 punch while supplementing their offensive line talent with free agent guard signings. These five teams combine for a win percentage that exceeds 70 percent entering Week 15.
They create matchup issues because of their willingness to gash teams down the field on the ground and lean on talented backs and lines alike. And if they continue to put together strong seasons, the return of the running game may be more of an inevitable formality.
When that happens, you’ll see lower Cover 2 frequencies again and an increased rate of Cover 3 once more — as was so prevalent in the mid-2010s as made popular by Seattle’s Legion of Boom.
If and when the pendulum swings back around, having talent readily available to fill the roles will put some defenses out on the forefront of playing the numbers game effectively in the box and still play sturdy pass coverage.
And all of this brings us to Notre Dame Fighting Irish safety Xavier Watts.
See Where Watts Lands on Our Latest Big Board
Watts Is The Future At Safety
Watts has a diverse background of alignment roles and responsibilities that make him a fit for modern-day safety roles. His ability to play on the second level or buzz down from depth as a run-support player makes him a viable rookie contributor. It gives him staying power in the current iteration of the league for however the trends persist.
However, his ball skills and ability to play in the high post suggest a Cover 3 stalwart in the middle who was one of the prized pieces of a star defense no less than a decade ago.
His coverage splits at Notre Dame lean into this style of play, too. Notre Dame has played Cover 1 (man coverage with one high safety) on nearly half of their snaps (48.6%) during the last two seasons, with Watts playing on the back end.
An additional 22 percent of his coverage assignments have been Cover 3. That’s more than 70 percent of “middle of the field closed” coverages over the past two seasons — Starks and Georgia are just over 40 percent. The same goes for Kamari Ramsey and UCLA/USC, and South Carolina’s Nick Emmanwori has just less than 50 percent since the start of 2023.
The role and implementation, combined with Watts’ strengths as a ballhawk, thanks to his extended time playing as a wide receiver before converting full-time to play safety, offer Watts a unique separator from the safety class.
He’s a proven ball hawk in traditional high-post safety roles in Cover 1 and Cover 3 while simultaneously being moved around enough at Notre Dame in his alignments that he feels like a clean projection to play in this current “do everything” diverse landscape for safeties in the NFL.
If the pendulum ultimately swings the other way and teams are stressed for a high post player with dynamic coverage ability and instincts to be an impactful defender on the back end, someone will have the chance to get out in front of that need now by selecting Watts this April.
Go back and watch his interceptions. The instinct to key the quarterback’s eyes understand the route leverage and how to space multiple routes in his general vicinity, and then the instinct to shade and trigger as quickly as he does to jump through the catch point and green the football is pretty spectacular stuff.
He does it from two-high and from the high post.
HE DID IT AGAIN.#GoIrish☘️ | @xavierwatts6 pic.twitter.com/l8Va2B76tV
— Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball) October 28, 2023
You can see his wide receiver background in his ball skills and feel for when the quarterback will drive a throw. His reward? A cool dozen interceptions in the last two years — with perhaps more on the way as the Irish prep to square off against Indiana in the College Football Playoff.
All of that certainly feels like someone we should be talking about more than the collective "we" has to this point.
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