Silver And Black Pride
On Friday, it was announced the Patriots planned to release safety Jabrill Peppers and like always, fans immediately started petitioning for their team to make the move and sign the soon to be free agent. Unlike most times, Peppers makes sense for the Raiders and he does so in a lot of ways.
The Raiders have an interesting safety room, they lost Trevon Moehrig, and added a bunch of veterans including Jeremy Chinn, Terrell Edmunds, Lonnie Johnson, and recently Tristin McCollum. All of those safeties stand at least 6’2 with Chinn 6’4 and McCollum 6’3 so Peppers doesn’t fully fit the same size requirements at only 5’11. However, the Seahawks under Pete Carroll weren’t as advantageous about their safeties heights as he is with cornerback (see Earl Thomas being 5’10).
Peppers is coming off three straight seasons with the Patriots where he’s performed well. Injuries have been a problem as Peppers only played 229 snaps in 2021, 398 in 2022, and 372 in 2024 with 955 in 2023. That does lead to a little concern about how productive Peppers can be over the course of a season, assuming he can stay healthy of course. Despite injuries, Peppers has graded out well via PFF with overall grades of 75, 87.3, and 82.3 in that span while his coverage grade has been 83.2 and 81.7 in 2023 and 2024 respectively. His run defense grade, 84.6, 90.7, and 74.7 all of which are good marks. Basing off his most recent full year of play time, in 2023, the soon to be 30 year old safety logged 78 tackles, 5 TFL, 2 interceptions, 8 breakups, a forced fumble, and a sack. In coverage, Peppers allowed an exceptional 52.6 QBR and added 28 stops with only a 11% missed tackle rate. In 2024, Peppers allowed a 39.2 QBR added nine stops, a 4% missed tackle rate and put up 40 tackles, 3 TFL, an INT, 2 PBU, and 1 FF in those limited snaps.
Obviously the injures are a risk, and Las Vegas has already lost Lonnie Johnson for at least a third of the season with a fractured fibula so Peppers staying healthy would be a massive question mark. Despite the questions surrounding his health, Peppers would easily be the Raiders best coverage safety, and likely best coverage defender across the board. The former New York Giant (under Patrick Graham and Rob Leonard as well) only has allowed a QBR over 100 three time in his career, 2017 and 2018 with the Browns and 2021 with the Giants. During his time with Graham in New York (2020-2021), Peppers posted 120 tackles, 12 TFL, an INT, 12 PBU, a FF, 4.5 sacks, 54 stops, and logged an 84.5 QBR allowed. Graham deployed Peppers in a variety of roles playing him at SS for about 70% of the time, FS 20%, and NCB the remaining 10%.
With the Raiders, they currently look to deploy Jeremy Chinn at strong safety, Isaiah Pola-Mao at free safety, and in...
