Xavier McKinney can cover up flaws in Packers' defensive roster

Jeff Hafley lit up when sharing his vision for the defense. In particular, the newly minted Green Bay Packers DC detailed the nuances of playing middle-field safety in the system he’ll install, naming half a dozen traits before concluding he understood he was describing the perfect football player. In other words: those guys rarely exist.

Xavier McKinney, the safety the Packers signed to a four-year, $68 million deal this week, isn’t a perfect football player. If he was, the New York Giants wouldn’t have allowed him to reach the open market. But McKinney’s skill set -- his reliability in coverage and as a tackler combined with his positional versatility -- can cover up for the flaws on Green Bay’s defensive roster.

Hafley opened that soliloquy by describing his ideal post safety as someone who “can erase things.” He meant erasing areas of the field as well as mistakes by those around him. But doing that, actually affecting the game in that way, makes McKinney the eraser for the flaws currently present on the roster.

We know where those flaws lie right now. The spine of the Packers defense might as well have osteoporosis. They’ll likely turn over the entire safety room this offseason and already showed De’Vondre Campbell the door as a designated post-June 1 cut. And while defensive linemen Karl Brooks and Devonte Wyatt provided juice as pass rushers last year, the interior of the Packers’ D-line struggled to get off blocks, making it too easy for teams to run the ball if they could successfully block Kenny Clark (usually by double team).

If the line can’t get off blocks and the linebackers misfire reading their keys, the Packers have to have a safety who can come downfield and cover for those mistakes.

“We got to eliminate explosive plays when we play this defense,” Hafley said on his preferred post safety. “So, if a run hits up the middle, this guy's got to come out of the middle field with his hair on fire. He's got to be able to get a guy down.”

McKinney looks like that sort of player. Among players who played at least 500 snaps at safety last season, McKinney produced the second best missed tackle percentage, whiffing on attempts just 5.7% of the time. For comparison, Darnell Savage ranked as the 10th worst, missing tackles on 17.5% of attempts.