Safeties aren't usually asked to do too much on offense. LOL Sorry, I know you meant to type "defense." Just couldn't resist.
I think their interest in Verner and/or Davis was genuine. Perhaps Idizik was too tight with the purse strings, or perhaps, those players and their agents were too greedy. There are or can be reasons other than $s why a player doesn't sign with a team. Some players with families don't want to live in the NY/NJ area. Some players perhaps don't want to live in a big metropolitan area. Perhaps because Verner wasn't a real fit in the scheme and Davis has a lot of questions regarding his intelligence and discipline, the Jets decided they weren't going to overpay to get one of them. If so, I think that's wise. IMO, it's not the end of the world that the Jets didn't get one of them. I agree that the overall talent of the Jets' secondary is bottom of the barrel. IMO the biggest reason for that is the Jets' failure to address the safety positions in a signficant fashion. They've continued to bring in a veteran JAGs and have only used low round draft picks on the positions. There have been few teams over the last 10 years that could match the talent the Jets had at CB. Now that Revis and Cro are gone and Milliner is still unproven/developing, yes their overall talent has dropped significantly. If Milliner develops and the Jets add either Clinton-Dix, Pryor or Dennard/Gilbert/Fuller/Verrett, that could change quickly and dramatically. I believe that Idzik is going to fix issues such as this. He is an experienced, intelligent football man who has been around the game his whole life. Tanny is an arrogant, ignorant, narcissistic bean counter and attorney. He had no business ever being hired to be the Jets' GM. He ignored a number of positions on the team and routinely traded away draft picks, thus killing the depth too. He left the team with so many holes, that I think in order to be a truly solid, deep, competitive team, it's going to take Idzik or any other quality GM 3-4 years at a minimum. I think the Jets over achieved in 2009 and 2010 and it made them all think they were a much better team than they actually were, and then to make matters worse, Tanny made moves that stripped the team of some of its depth and ruined its chemistry.
In any event, you were right. LOL I think that's one of the flaws in Rex's scheme IF it is by design rather than default due to Tanny never having addressed the safety position in the draft in a more significant fashion.