Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

free/strong safety is interesting as well.

That is a term for both where one lines up or what he does and then the name in the program ... SS or FS.

It is hard to find for sure who did what. Larry Wilson, I do think, was called a free safety before he was a free safety. But would have to check. He was a right safety early in his career. Often, as we know, the tight end was on the defense's left more often than not, so the right safety was "free" most of the time.

Petiton was eventually a strong safety but it may have been late with Bears, with the Rams it's more certain.

These days, strong and box are sometimes interchangeable... but many safeties in the NFL for the past decade are just left and right.So, whatever declared strength is, wide side, TE side, 3 receiver side would be 'strong' but with so many 2-deep looks, they are doing the same things, from play to play

but with as much Fangio-adjacent stuff, on Cov-2 both safeties stay deep, unless a non-traditional Tampa-2, on Cover 4, 6/8 both safeties stay deep.

I don't think we know who first "SS" and "FS" was, but the transition was in 1960s IMO, parallel with teams fully adopting tight ends and teams using different kinds of players at safety, rather than twin safeties, where both wee 6-0, 195 ... we began so see one bigger and one smaller guy in many teams' lineups.

It's funny: I always thought of these designations about how they play. Strong = hitter. Free = rover. I did not think of it based on the tight end position, even though that's how we label the Sam and the Will.

readjack wrote: ↑Fri Oct 30, 2026 10:50 am It's funny: I always thought of these designations about how they play. Strong = hitter. Free = rover. I did not think of it based on the tight end position, even though that's how we label the Sam and the Will.

It's definitely the same as Sam and Will, that is if it's a true Sam and Will, sometimes they list Sam and Will but really it was left and white.

Landry did it (he called them Sara and Wanda) based on TE for many years, late 1960s to the 1980s.

George Allen called them Stub and Buck, but in general they were left and right. In the playbook, if TE was on defense left the left LBer was Stub and the other one was Buck, but if the tight end was on the defense's right, then the right LBer would be Stub and the left linebacker Buck.

But old school, in the 2 RB era, fullback was on the TE side and the HB away (unless the switched - which they did a few times a game, I'd guess) -- but these days, since the one-back offense the fullback was the blocker and the running back the ball carrier. That is same now, for the few teams tha still use a fullback.

So it's all a matter of nomenclature, is the position a alignment/postion or a name? I guess both is best answer

Correct me if I am wrong, but I read at the time in the late 1970s that the SS was the one who played at the same side as the tight end, so in most cases back then the strong safety would have been the left safety, and the free safety the right safety.