Pro Football Focus recently did some research on the best tackling safeties in the NFL in terms tackles vs missed tackles. A surprising name came up on the top of the of their list. Eagles rookie Kurt Coleman.
Their research found that Coleman had not missed a single tackle in 2010 and was only one of three players with at least 15 tackles to do so. Now, to be fair, we are working with a small sample size with Coleman. He did have only 24 tackles on the year and started just two games. However, in that time we all saw a guy who likes to hit and has sound tackling technique. Despite the small sample size, with Nate Allen Kurt Coleman and Jaiquawn Jarrett, the Eagles have a very promising young trio of safeties and reading stuff like this makes me a little bit less nervous about the prospect of the team lettering Quintin Mikell walk. A little bit...
No other Eagles made the top or bottom 20. However, some ex-Eagles did show up in both. Not surprisingly, Brian Dawkins was in the top 20, missing a tackle in only one every 22 attempts.
There's a number of ex-Eagles in the bottom led not surprisingly by Sean Considine, who was the 6th worst tackler among safeties with a miss every five attempts. Former Eagle Sean Jones, now with the Bucs, is also amongst the bottom. It's worth noting that Earl Thomas, who many Eagles fans wanted the team to take instead of Brandon Graham in 2010, was also amongst the worst tacklers among safeties with 12 missed tackles, one every 6.75 attempts.
Redskins' Kareem Moore is the 5th worst tackler and Giants' Deion Grant was in the bottom 20 as well.