| BakoSaint |
08-18-2023 01:50 PM |
Re: What Went Right & What Went Wrong
Quote:
Originally Posted by Boston Saint
(Post 977514)
Fair enough. Seems to me that over that time period that the line was stable enough and they addressed deficiencies enough with multiple 1st rounder picks and trades/signings that adding 3-4 rounders either a) would not have made a difference and b) would have neglected other positions of need. I could be wrong. Just seems a pretty specific complaint though.
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I agree that the line was stable ON PAPER. I feel like we built a paper oline by neglecting the mid rounds. I think where that got us was a guy like Peat never got pushed, like imagine if we had taken a mid-round guard and they turned into what our mid-round guard picks in the past had turned into about half the time, like a Nicks or Evans. Then Peat loses his spot, has to work harder to get back in the mix, and we have depth and flexibility. Or Ruiz. I am glad he came around now. But maybe if he has competition he comes around better and faster. But ultimately its all about depth. It seems like our formula on oline is to stack up 5 starters, maybe one depth guy maybe, and the rest is udfa and journeymen nobodies. So whenever we have one injury on oline half the oline shifts positions because we 'value versatility' as an alternative to actual depth, and then some nobody comes in for an injury, and we blame the season on it.
With all the oline injuries we had over the years, I can't imagine it wouldn't have made a difference to have 4th rounders subbing in versus UDFA. And if one of those 4th rounders becomes a Nicks or Evans, that definitely makes a difference.
As far as neglecting other positions, a big thing would be trading up less, because we flush so many round 3-5 picks trading up. We could draft the same positions 12 picks later and have way better oline depth and maybe the same player we would have picked falls to us, maybe not. There is no guarantee Davenport would not have fallen to us if we waited, though he was a bust anyway. We also drafted Garrett Grayson when we were many years from moving on from Brees, and now we drafted Jake Haener where if he was great, the cap pain of moving on from Derek Carr and Jameis Winston and Taysom Hill would mean he would have to be the greatest QB of all time and be able to succeed even if we let the entire offense walk and surrounded him with 2022 Houston Texans caliber weapons, which is what we would need to do to afford moving on from Carr and company. I guess the timing was better for the Ian Cook experiment but the result was poor and again, if we have a long history of hitting shots on mid rounds guards and a long history missing shots on mid round QBs, why not take the shot you have shown you can hit? |
