What the Dolphins are getting in safety Jordan Poyer: The Bills explain his value

With Dolphins training camp beginning two weeks from today, a six-pack of notes on new Dolphins safety Jordan Poyer, who will be Jevon Holland’s new running mate at safety, with Marcus Maye also expected to play a lot:

▪ It remains to be seen whether Poyer — who turned 33 in April - can approach his All-Pro form of 2021, when he had five interceptions and was as impactful as a safety could be.

But this much is clear: Bills people who spent time with him the past seven years can’t stop raving about him. Check out some of what they have said about him in recent years:

Center Mitch Morse (now with Jacksonville): “You see Jordan Poyer play football, he only knows one speed and only knows one way, and that’s to put his nose into it. He plays with such passion and such competitive drive and he wants to win and wants to execute his defense. Six days out of the week, he’s very Zen, very in tune with himself and everything and then come Sunday, he’s a lunatic, and I think that’s boded well for him.”

General manager Brandon Beane: “Jordan’s been a really good player. He’s been a good pro. I think he’s done a great job. He’s been an integral part of our defense.”

Coach Sean McDermott raves about Poyer’s leadership: “The edge of our defense when Jordan plays, we have a certain edge to us, and that’s a great quality that a player can add that to a team in addition to what he already adds in the X’s and O’s doing his job. That edge, that dawg that he adds to our defense, is well known.”

Former Bills defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier: “I appreciate what he brings to our defense both as a player on the field but a leader in the locker room and at practice as well. He’s a heck of a safety, one of the premier safeties in our game.”

▪ Poyer, who signed a one-year, $2 million deal, will now play alongside Holland.

In Buffalo, he and Micah Hyde were a high-level safety tandem for seven years.

“He’s all over the field,” Hyde said. “Hasn’t been getting the recognition that he deserves. He can rush the quarterback. He can tackle. He can cover. He can do it all for us.”

▪ Besides the ball-hawking skills that led to 22 interceptions in seven years with Buffalo, another of his valuable assets is that he can be deployed in different ways.

Here’s how the team’s website explained it, citing a third-and-15 in a game last October against Tampa Bay, when Poyer sometimes lined up in the second level of the defense and often lined up in the dime package, seemingly confusing the Bucs’ offense, and also blitzed at times:

“We moved him into the dime position on third and sometimes second down,” McDermott said. “You use the resources you have; it’s a position Jordan has played for us before and he’s tough.”

As Bills defensive line coach Eric Washington said: “We blitz him from the safety position. He’s excellent as a blitzer, as a fifth rusher.”

Poyer had 11 sacks in his seven seasons in Buffalo. Last season, he had seven pressures and a sack on 44 pass rushing chances. In 2021, he had nine pressures and three sacks in just 32 pass rushing chances.

▪ Last season, Poyer had 100 tackles, no interceptions and a forced fumble in 16 games for Buffalo, all starts.

Pro Football Focus rated him 46th among 95 qualifying safeties last season.

Poyer had a 102.9 passer rating in his coverage area last season; 33 of the 45 targets in his coverage area were caught for 349 yards, per PFF. He permitted one touchdown. That passer rating is cause for concern, considering his age.

Here were his pass coverage numbers the previous three seasons:

2020: 104.1 passer rating against; 40 completions in 55 targets for 347 yards, 8.7 per reception; five TDs allowed and two interceptions..

2021, when he was first-team All-Pro: an incredible 13.7 passer rating against; 13 completions in 28 attempts for 61 yards, a 4.7 average per reception; no touchdowns allowed and five interceptions.

2022: 86.0 passer rating against; 20 completions in 29 targets for 194 yards; 9.7 yards per reception; five touchdowns allowed and four interceptions.

▪ Tim Graham, a longtime Bills writer and columnist for The Athletic, said this of Poyer after Buffalo released him this offseason:

Though he was first-team All-Pro in 2021, “his most amazing season was 2022 [when he had his only Pro Bowl invitation]. He suffered a hyperextended elbow in training camp, a sprained foot in Week 2, rib injuries that included a punctured lung in Week 4, a torn meniscus in Week 15 and a concussion in the playoff finale.

“The punctured lung kept him out of one game. Because air pressure prevented him from flying a week later to Kansas City for the grudge match at Arrowhead Stadium, the Bills hired a driver to transport Poyer and his family for 15 hours in a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van. He started, played all 67 defensive snaps and made four tackles.

“Poyer clearly had lost a step by last season. He played 98 percent of the team’s defensive snaps but didn’t record an interception for the first time since 2015. He forced one fumble and notched one sack, but amassed 100 tackles, his fourth triple-digit campaign.”

Buffalo’s defense was ninth against total yards, was eighth against the pass and seventh overall in touchdown throws allowed last season. Poyer was second on the team in tackles.

▪ Among the adversity that Poyer has overcome: a lacerated kidney that ended his season in Week 6 in 2016, when he played for Cleveland:

He was the victim of a brutal, illegal blindside hit during a punt return against Tennessee.

“First, I thought the wind was knocked out of me,’’ Poyer said. “Then I got to the sideline and I’m throwing up blood. I went to the locker room and I was peeing blood.’’

He spent two nights in a Nashville hospital.

“I was nervous, sure,’’ Poyer said. “You get to the hospital and you hear the severity of the injury. The doctors told me if it was a half inch higher or a half inch lower it would have been life threatening, so it was almost.”