surveyed league executives, coaches and scouts<\/a> to find out which safeties they liked best in the league.<\/p>\nFitzpatrick earned the No. 9 spot.<\/p>\n
“He still has a lot to offer — incredibly hard worker, tone-setter, super solid running things on the back end and preventing big plays, things that go unnoticed,” an NFL coordinator said. “I’m expecting a bounce-back year from him.” – ESPN survey<\/p>\n
Though Fitzpatrick has dropped from No. 1 to No. 4 to No. 9 in the rankings over the past three years, the five-time Pro Bowler still garners enough respect to crack this top 10.<\/p>\n
Fitzpatrick joins names such as Kyle Hamilton, Brian Branch and Xavier McKinney inside the top 10.<\/p>\n
The 6-foot-1, 207-pound safety had a pair of interceptions and nine passes defensed with the Dolphins during his rookie season in 2018. Fitzpatrick had a 50-yard pick-six against the Vikings during that rookie campaign.<\/p>\n
Fitzpatrick would morph into the league’s top safety during his time in Pittsburgh. In 2022, Fitzpatrick led the NFL in interceptions with six. During the 2019-22 seasons in Pittsburgh, Fitzpatrick registered 17 interceptions, 38 passes defended and 356 tackles.<\/p>\n
In 27 starts across the past two seasons, Fitzpatrick has recorded just the lone interception and seven passes defended. But, ESPN’s survey shows that there’s still optimism that Fitzpatrick has more elite play left in the tank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ESPN’s survey of league executives, coaches and scouts shows the league still loves Minkah Fitzpatrick. Dolphins fans are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2049],"tags":[247,265,217,12,388,23184,7699,7,20842,379,1294,1815,27766,216,251,2087,23183,7583,248,267,88,6,35196,245,537,530,3376,9,266,1058,5582],"class_list":{"0":"post-205134","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami-dolphins","8":"tag-american","9":"tag-american-football","10":"tag-dolphins","11":"tag-espn","12":"tag-espn-inc","13":"tag-fitzpatrick","14":"tag-fl","15":"tag-football","16":"tag-hub","17":"tag-inc","18":"tag-jalen","19":"tag-jalen-ramsey","20":"tag-mckinney","21":"tag-miami","22":"tag-miami-dolphins","23":"tag-miamidolphins","24":"tag-minkah","25":"tag-minkah-fitzpatrick","26":"tag-national","27":"tag-national-sports","28":"tag-news","29":"tag-nfl","30":"tag-nfl-hub","31":"tag-overall","32":"tag-overall-positive","33":"tag-positive","34":"tag-ramsey","35":"tag-sports","36":"tag-sports-news","37":"tag-xavier","38":"tag-xavier-mckinney"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}