A former Clemson safety took to Twitter on Sunday, seemingly taking exception to the fact his name wasn’t mentioned in an ESPN NFL article published Saturday.
ESPN released a ranking of the NFL’s top 10 safeties for the 2022 season (subscription required) after surveying over 50 league executives, coaches, scouts and players to help them come up with the ranking, with the voters giving ESPN their top 10 players at the safety position.
ESPN then rounded up the results and ranked players based on the number of top-10 votes they received and composite average along with a slew of interviews, research and film-study help from ESPN NFL analyst Matt Bowen.
Although he is coming off a breakout 2021 season with the Dallas Cowboys, which earned him a two-year, $10 million contract extension with America’s Team, former Clemson safety Jayron Kearse wasn’t ranked among the league’s top 10 safeties on ESPN’s list.
Kearse also was not included among the eight players named as honorable mentions in the ESPN article, nor was Kearse named as one of the other five safeties that also received votes.
All in all, 23 safeties were mentioned in the ESPN article, and Kearse was not one of them — and he obviously does not agree that there are that many safeties in the NFL better than him, as you can see in his Twitter post below:
https://twitter.com/Jayronkearse8/status/1546181186535448579
After signing with the Cowboys last spring on a deal worth around $1.1 million (with $137,000 in guarantees), Kearse had a career season in Dallas last year, leading the team with 101 tackles (67 solo) to go with 10 pass breakups and two interceptions.
–Photo for this article courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
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