He didn't go with the plan to fight safe, he attempted four times to attack a sub and failed. He hits a wall on his submission rating or sub offense. That is really bad, the reasons are that it limits his potential to sub even better opponents than Lewis.
It makes me doubt if he could had tapped Francis, Gane, Stipe, DC, Jones, and in this case, curtis.
And all the methods in which Curtis lost have been by standup ko. Every competent grappler he's faced avoided him on the ground before we could find out. Even as a national wrestling champion , who went undefeated in high school, he's going to have enough knowledge to stay afloat and/or make this Almeida's most difficult fight.
As for beating everyone opponent Curtis’ faced, i think it's still a big leap, he's not had the best tank past 3 rounds, Overeem circa 2018 beat Pavlavich after he lost to Curtis, he was still a force to be reckon and had a pretty decent counter grappling.