Lovie Smith can never find the right safeties

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have issues at the safety position, and that's not a new development for Lovie Smith. His personnel director from his time with the Chicago Bears chimed in on Twitter to explain a little thing about the Bucs' head coach, and safeties.

In 9 years in Chicago, we could never get Lovie the right safeties. With TB trading Barron, it looks as they have the same problem there

— Greg Gabriel (@greggabe) October 29, 2014

It's somewhat interesting that they couldn't get Lovie Smith the right safeties, and he still produced top-notch defenses year in, year out. We'll have to see whether he can replicate that in Tampa, but he'll at least have to do without Mark Barron, who was traded to the St. Louis Rams for fourth- and sixth-round picks.

It's also somewhat obvious that neither Dashon Goldson nor Major Wright, the likely replacement for Barron, are the right safeties for Lovie Smith either. Lest we forget, Wright wasn't on the roster during week one of the regular season -- they cut him to avoid having to effectively guarantee his salary as a veteran. You don't do that to players you actually like.

As for Goldson, he appears to be on the roster mostly because of his guaranteed salary. His play hasn't been horrible, but it hasn't been good, either, and there's nothing to his game right now that would make you stand up and praise him. He's missed a few too many tackles, and he's not worth what he's being paid -- which means he'll either be gone next season (even though he'll get $3 million in guaranteed salary), or the year after.

But that leaves the Bucs with a very different problem: who are they going to suit up at safety, exactly?