What is the difference between free safety and strong safety?

Answer 1

Stats wise, your free safety will have more interceptions and your strong safety will have more tackles. When a safety blitz is called, it is almost always with a team’s strong safety. Meanwhile, a defensive call will allow a free safety the option to "cheat" now and then. When a free safety "cheats" he will shade toward a particular receiver based on his particular subjective read of the quarterback, or the direct play call by the the defensive coordinator. The reason for these distinctions was clearly stated in above answers. The safety position is a versatile yet supplementary position. Since a safety can do "anything" on defense, from pass coverage, to run stopping, to blitzing the quarterback, to QB spying...there is no way that a single player with a given skill set can do all of these things. Thus coaches draw a distinction and will ask one player to perform only a limited role. Thus, on way to limit these roles is through an upfront distinction of "strong" safety with a limited role of run-stopping and blitzing, and a "free" safety who is "free" to roam around the secondary "spying" the QB or aiding in pass defense. Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Having a free saftey and a strong saftey are like having a QB that only throws the ball and a QB that only runs the ball.They can both cover the pass but one is better than the other at either the run or the throw.A free saftey usually is faster and therefore covers the passing game a strong saftey is stronger thus covering the run a lot better.It all depends on the play call but to answer your question in shorter terms one is bigger one is not

Answer 3

the strong safety tends to help with run defense more and the free safety tends to be in coverage more to help with pass defense. Also the strong safety usually lines up over the strong side of the offense, that's where the tight end goes or if there are multiple recievers on one side of the offense.

Answer 4

There are 2 safties & their job is to assist the front line & the secondary. There are times when both help out one area but in general the strong saftey is a bigger/stronger (yet slower) player who helps prevent runs. The free saftey (normally faster but not as big) helps to defend against the pass. The free saftey has room to roam & can be lined up anywhere (so can stop the run & blitz the QB as well) but seldom do you see a strong saftey in the secondary as they are quick (burst of speed) but not very fast in a long run.

Answer 5

The free safety tends to "roll" towards a reciever/tight end and help with pass coverage. The strong safety tends to follow the ball, if the quarterback rolls one way he tends to follow.

Answer 6

FS usually is the one that is dropped back into coverage (Ex. Ed Reed). Theyre not usually around the line of scrimmage that much but depending on the defensive scheme, they can be used to blitz. SS are usually everywhere. They can drop into coverage, blitz, cover the slot WR or TE in man to man coverage, or come down in the box to help stop the run (Ex. Troy Polamalu, Adrian Wilson, Bob Sanders). Depending on the defense you run sometimes the safties switch posistions to confuse the offense. If you're good at both, then it helps. Ex. Ed Reed plays FS, but he's so versatile he can play SS too. He is mainly used as a FS though because he's so good at coverage. Another example would be Bob Sanders. He's a SS & is mostly used as the 8th man in the box to help stop the run because he's such a great hitter & tackler. He wouldn't be as good at FS because it doesn't utilize the skills he has, which is tackling & being near the line of scrimmage. A good combination of skills would be Troy Polamalu. He can play both FS & SS because not only is he good at tackling, he's good at coverage too.

Answer 7

Strong is a bigger and stronger guy that goes 4 the QB more