A free safety in football is someone assigned to roam the back field and eliminate all threats of the opposing team scoring against his defense. He’s the last man back and his presence allows the defense to do their job with the confidence of knowing someone is back there to protect them. If a long ball is thrown, the free safety is there to knock it down or intercept it.
A strong safety on the other hand is one who is assigned to a specific side of the field, or who already has a defender designated to them. Valuable but not quite as much as the free safety whose job it is to protect the entire field.
In life terms, our free safeties are the people who allow us to live our lives with confidence and pursue goals and aspirations with vigor and enthusiasm knowing we can fall back to them. They are, by nature, encouraging and protective over us. They get on us when we miscalculate or fail on an assignment but only with the intent of making us better next time. Free safeties see things we can’t see. They become our peripheral vision and extra set of eyes on this turf call life. Their game is mostly built on intuition and instinct. They see danger? They tackle it. See a threat coming? Intercept it.
The key now becomes two fold: choosing a good free safety that suits your style of play and also allowing them to do their jobs. Some of us go about life thinking we don’t need a free safety until one day life loops a ball over our head and scores a painful touchdown. Then we wish we would have had someone back there to protect us. Some of us have free safeties and don’t allow them to do their job properly. We get in the way or get too comfortable and wave them off prematurely. Other times we think we can have more than one but that doesn’t work either. Eventually the two will collide and you’ll be left with none. Or you’ll have strong safeties playing the free safety position they don’t belong in.
Most of our friends are strong safeties. Their range is a bit limited. They’re there when it’s time for parties and time for laughs. Occasionally we’ll share something deep with them but with caution to not reveal more than they can handle. With free safeties, however, the range is endless. You don’t have to think around them or use much caution. It’s a free and safe zone where all is welcome. From the back field where they stand observing, they see all our weaknesses and vulnerabilities so trying to hide them is pointless. Furthermore, free safeties love their job. They’re so in tune that they can sense when things aren’t right and unlike other positions who may do the bare minimum, they feel somewhat responsible anytime something bad happens.
Back in the day Bill Withers sang “we all need somebody to lean on”. Michael Jackson’s “Will You Be There” captured the same emotion in the 90′s. And Jay-Z more recently said, “whateva she lacks, I’m right over her shoulder and when I’m off track, (she’s) keeping me focused”.
The bottom line is we all need a free safety, it’s why we come into the world with a built in one, our mother’s. Over time, for some sooner than other’s, we defect from our mother’s and have to find a new free safety ready for the day to day struggles we’re facing. If there’s a lack of trust, lack of communication, or lack of respect, the whole operation is in jeopardy and you’re probably better off without a free safety for some time. But eventually you’ll need that protection, that coverage, and that safety again. They make wins more frequent, losses easier to accept, and this game of life that much more fun.
