The safety position has changed a lot through NFL history. Once upon a time, there were free safeties to covered intermediate to deep receivers, and strong safeties to hung around the box and attacked running backs when they got past defensive linemen and linebackers. That’s still true to a point, but in the modern league, the interchangeable safety is the most valuable—the guy who can do everything from filling up run fits to covering a tight end 30 yards up the seam to moving over to the slot.

Never has more been asked of safeties, which makes it very interesting that the market for the position has become so soft. In 2018, safeties Tre Boston, Eric Reid, and Kenny Vaccaro were left too long at the dance when teams could have used their talents, and most of the safeties that were signed nearer to the start of the league year found that their value was far below what they may have anticipated.

Tyrann Mathieu signed a one-year, $7 million deal with the Texans, and he’s back out on the open market after a fine season. Kurt Coleman signed a three-year, $16.35 million deal with the Saints and was released one year into the thing. Morgan Burnett signed a three-year, $14..5 million deal with the Steelers, and he wants to be released after one season because he feels his new team was playing him out of position. No safety in that class was going to get the kind of money given to Eric Berry, Earl Thomas, Harrison Smith and Reshad Jones in recent years.

Reid and Vaccaro may have been on the outs with the NFL because of their interest in social justice issues, which led some to wonder if positional collusion was afoot. If that was the case though, how to explain what’s happened before the 2019 league year even begins? With the news that the Giants would not place the franchise tag on Landon Collins, and that the Ravens had released veteran Eric Weddle, the list of free agents at the position looks even more ridiculous in 2019:

The free agent market for safeties is flooded with talent: Landon Collins

Earl Thomas

Lamarcus Joyner

Tyrann Mathieu

Adrian Amos

Ha-Ha Clinton-Dix

Eric Weddle

Clayton Geathers

Glover Quin

Tre Boston

Kenny Vaccaro

George Iloka

Jimmie Ward

Adrian Phillips I mean, wow! — NFL Update (@MySportsUpdate) March 5, 2019

Pack that in with this recent news from Calvin Watkins of The Athletic, and it certainly seems as if, no matter how good they are, these players are about to see their value tank again.

Let’s clear this up now. A source tells @TheAthleticDFW Cowboys have no interest in Earl Thomas or Landon Collins. The financial price is too steep. This isn’t new news. Now Cowboys also have no interest in Eric Weddle either. Price is everything. — Calvin Watkins (@calvinwatkins) March 6, 2019

So, what in the wide, wide world of sports is going on here? While I don’t believe that a cabal of team owners gathered in a dark room with evil theme music to blow the safety market to smithereens, there is a definite market adjustment here. One could argue that none of the names on that list present the full-field versatility that Berry, Thomas, and Smith did when they got their mega-deals a few years back, but one could also argue that because more is demanded of the safety position than ever before, NFL teams are looking to the draft to fill those needs on a younger, cheaper basis that inevitably makes veterans more disposable.

Gallery Choose Your Weapon: Dueling 2019 1st-round mock drafts View 32 photos

“We’re seeing defensive backs all over the field,” Pete Carroll told me at the combine when I asked him about the changing nature of the safety position, and of defensive backs in general. “The linebacker spot for sure, you can see it. That’s because of the nature of the offenses they’re facing in college. The field is spread out. This is nothing new, we’ve been talking this way for years, but more than ever, defenses are making the decisions to play guys that are more like defensive backs. Even the linebackers are getting smaller, they’re quicker, niftier and can match up differently than they have in the past. The game is changing in that regard without question. It’s pretty obvious.”

And with that in mind, positional value takes a dive. When you put seven defensive backs on the field for an entire game, as the Chargers did in the playoffs, you are not going to want to pay all of those guys as a superstar rate. More likely, you’re going to want to get individual skill set players who can fill a role. The Chargers selected Derwin James in the first round of the 2018 draft not only to replace Tre Boston, but to put a financial cap on one of their most valuable defensive positions over the next four seasons. They weren’t going to pay Boston for what he’d already done, even though he had a superb 2017 season, because they were busy paying James for what they thought he was going to do.

The 2019 draft class brings yet more possibilities. If you need a guy to patrol the deep third, you can choose between Alabama’s Deionte Thompson, Delaware’s Nasir Adderley, or Florida’s Chauncey Gardner-Johnson in the first and second rounds. Later in the second or third days, there are potential standouts such as Fresno State’s Mike Bell. If you need more of a thumper at strong safety, it’s a veritable Golden Corral buffet. Washington’s Taylor Rapp, Mississippi State’s Jonathan Abram, and Iowa’s Amani Hooker are ready and willing to fill your positional needs for a lot less than it would cost to slap a tag on Landon Collins. Such prospects are also far younger than Eric Weddle and have far fewer injury concerns than Earl Thomas.

Today’s veteran safety is caught in a positional crunch that is still working itself out, and that schism is exacerbated by a feeder stream of college talent that may better address the need for down-to-down versatility in modern defenses. It may not be nice for, or fair to, those players on the outside looking in, but it is very much the NFL’s current reality, and you can expect it to bite a lot of experienced safeties for the second straight year.

Until these safeties see their value drop a few floors, they’ll continue to be without a home.