the point that the Cowboys were just a hairline away from trading for Earl Thomas, may have been an indication that the Cowboys were going to try to see if they could make that
duo of Thomas/Xavier work, and since the Cowboys given the impression that they see the safeties as interchangeable rather than FS vs SS prototype, requiring both safeties to be able to play in the box, or single high.
I could see what you mean in that Xavier has to be the smallest "listed ' 200 pounds I have ever seen in an NFL safety and physically I dunno about the physical pounding he could take with that frame in constant support, but the bigger picture is getting two of their best safeties on the field starting at the same time. ( if they had acquired Earl Thomas)
I'm not clear on how close the Cowboys actually got to trading for Earl Thomas. The Joneses tend to talk a lot but neither of them ever confirmed the trade rumors back during the 2018 draft. They did say they were interested in ET this year as a free agent cut they never appeared to be close to matching his price.
The appeal of Earl Thomas in 2018 was that it was the 1st year of the Kris Richard scheme in Dallas and ET would be the field general while implementing that scheme.
I think their interest was much lower in 2019 because they already had 1 year in the KR coverage scheme AND they were content with Woods at FS.
If ET had come to the Cowboys in 2018, I think they would have mixed in both Woods and Heath at SS.
I wound not describe the Cowboys Safeties as interchangeable per se.
They sometimes move Woods down when they expect a pass and want to use the CB type skills of Woods to match up on specific players.
That works out because Heath is really better at FS than at SS anyway.
If they had a prototype modern NFL Strong Safety, then I don't know if they would ever flip them but most teams don't have type type of SS (Derwin James when healthy).
The other option instead of flipping Safeties is to have 2 Strong Safeties with 1 more of a pass defender and 1 more of a run defender. They did that in the last several games of 2017 (before Kris Richard was here) with Kavon Frazier playing when the Cowboys expected run.
Side Note: Based on draft measurements X.Woods was about the same size as Earl Thomas. Similar Height but ET did weigh about 8 pounds more. I would guess that their NFL playing weight is similar with both likely around 205 pounds and not less than 200.
Donovan Wilson played zero snaps on defense and only 10 on special teams. I'm not certain if he is 100% healthy yet, but I had hoped to see him play a few snaps against Miami (Thompson played 100% of the defensive snaps and Heath played 89% with Frazier playing about 8 snaps on defense).
I hope the team is ready this week because Bridgewater is better than most backup QBs from what I've seen.
