I really don’t want to beat the McCourty is overrated drum, because I do think he is very good. However I laid out a lot of stats in this piece here that might give anyone calling him a top-3 free safety some pause.
McCourty’s been at free safety since 2012, but it wasn’t until Revis/Browner showed up that the pass defense really took a big step forward.
I still very much want him back, but if someone wants to give him a monster deal I don’t think the Pats will, nor should, match.
Harmon would be the first in line on the depth chart to replace him and he’s shown some very good range playing free safety in many sub-packages this season – just see the AFCCG GW INT.
And as I point out in the Revis piece I linked to above, if you’ve got him taking a whole side of the field, how much value do you really need to put on a free safety when he only has to cover ½ – 2/3s of the field?
