Patrick
Mcmorris.
Patrick
Mcmorris.
California· 6'0"· 206 lb
"A five-year, 252-tackle box safety whose value was never in coverage range but in arriving on time, finishing the tackle, and covering kicks well enough to keep a roster spot."Pre-draft read
A downhill, box-tilted safety who played his best football with the field in front of him. McMorris lined up as a deep-half defender in San Diego State's split-safety looks but made his living rotating down: he triggers fast on run keys, takes efficient angles into the alley, and finishes with reliable, wrap-up tackling rather than shoulder-first misses.
The secondary trait is ball production off zone eyes. He reads the quarterback well from post and curl-flat drops, drives on stems, and has the hands to convert deflections into takeaways. Man coverage against tight ends and slots is functional, not sticky, and his long speed is average, so the separator is timing and processing, not recovery burst.
Split-safety (quarters / Cover 2) defense that lets him play downhill from a two-high shell
Year 1: fourth safety and core-four special teams contributor. Ceiling: rotational third safety and dime box defender in a quarters structure.
A single-high Cover 3 defense that asks him to play the deep middle alone or match tight ends man-to-man across the formation.
Best deployed as the strong-side rotator next to a true rangy free safety, not as the last line of defense.
Patrick McMorris | Safety | California | 2023 Highlights
Full 2023 Cal season reel: downhill fills, zone drives and the two forced fumbles.
Patrick McMorris (Cal Safety) vs Auburn 2023
Single-game cutup against SEC personnel; best look at his tackling and run fits.
SDSU Football: Patrick McMorris tabbed top safety in the Mountain West
San Diego State feature from the 2021-22 run that produced four interceptions.
McMorris entered the 2024 cycle as an old-for-the-class safety with a long resume: four years at San Diego State, one graduate season at California, and starting reps in three different defensive systems. He is a strong-safety type who is comfortable near the line, communicates the back end, and offers real special-teams value on all four core units — the kind of profile that survives roster cuts.
The production backs the tape. He posted 90 tackles as a junior with four interceptions and nine breakups, 61 tackles as a senior with a fumble return touchdown, then transferred to Cal and hit 90 tackles again with 4.5 tackles for loss, a sack, two forced fumbles and eight breakups against Pac-12 offenses. That is 252 career tackles, 23 breakups and six picks across 55 games. The flags were athletic: average burst and speed, tightness turning and running vertically, and a tendency to overrun angles in space when he trusts a false key.
The board had him as a late-round developmental starter — a fifth-to-seventh-round grade with a floor built on special teams and a ceiling of a rotational third safety. Miami taking him at 198 was low-cost roster math: a mature, high-volume tackler for a defense that wanted deeper box coverage without spending real capital.
- 01
Downhill trigger
reads run keys from depth, fills the alley on time, and consistently arrives with leverage instead of chasing the ball carrier from behind.
- 02
Tackling reliability
wrap-and-drive finisher who rarely gives up extra yards; 252 career tackles across five seasons with no chronic whiff problem on tape.
- 03
Zone eyes
plays the quarterback from post and curl-flat drops, drives on route stems, and turned that vision into six interceptions and 23 career breakups.
- 04
Ball skills
natural hands at the catch point, including four picks and 75 return yards during his 2021 breakout at San Diego State.
- 05
Special-teams value
core-four contributor with the length and pursuit speed to cover kicks, the trait that gives him a real path onto a 53-man roster.
- 01
Long speed
average vertical burst shows when he has to carry a seam or recover after a false step; he cannot make up ground once beaten over the top.
- 02
Hip fluidity
tight turning and running in man coverage, which limits him against athletic tight ends and slots in true match assignments.
- 03
False keys
will bite on play-action and misdirection from depth, opening the middle of the field behind him on intermediate crossers.
- 04
Range as a single-high
better in split-safety structures; asked to cover half the field alone, his angles narrow and the deep third becomes vulnerable.
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | San Diego State | 9 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | San Diego State | 7 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2021 | San Diego State | 14 | 90 | 0 | 4 | 9 | 0 |
| 2022 | San Diego State | 12 | 61 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 0 |
| 2023 | California | 13 | 90 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 2 |
| Career | — | 55 | 252 | 1 | 6 | 23 | 2 |
Verified against cfbstats.com season pages (2020-2023). 2019 line taken from the San Diego State/Miami media guide; cfbstats has no 2019 page, so unpublished categories are null rather than zero.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Career special-teams safety who bounces between rosters and practice squads while holding value on core units.
Same Cal pipeline and same late-round path: teams-first entry, then real defensive snaps as a box-tilted third safety.
Late-round Cal safety whose early injury cost him the developmental window he needed to stick.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Miami drafted him at 198 and then lost the entire developmental runway. McMorris landed on injured reserve on August 28, 2024, missed the first eleven games of his rookie season, and was activated on November 26 — he played six games, all on special teams, and finished with one solo tackle. He entered 2025 still on the Dolphins but never carved out a defensive role, and the season became a practice-squad circuit: time with the New York Giants and then the Arizona Cardinals without adding to his defensive stat line. In April 2026 the San Francisco 49ers signed him to a one-year deal, his fourth organization in three seasons.
In hindsight the evaluation was accurate about the player and unlucky about the timing. Nobody had McMorris as a starter; the pitch was a special-teams core-four body who could grow into a third safety, and that path required a healthy first camp he never got. The traits that made him a late pick — average recovery speed, tight hips, dependence on split-safety structure — are exactly the ones that make it hard to earn defensive snaps once you are behind. He is not a bust at 198; he is the normal outcome of a sixth-round safety whose rookie year disappeared, still hanging on because the tackling and teams value are real.
Data note: Verified against cfbstats.com season pages (2020-2023). 2019 line taken from the San Diego State/Miami media guide; cfbstats has no 2019 page, so unpublished categories are null rather than zero.