Charles Clay isn't lacking size. He'll be right at about average size for an NFL TE. If anything, Clay claims that his 6-3 frame hurts his blocking ability...
He was the starting 4-3 MLB from opening Day, the article is merely par of the course on what people thought of his play last yr, to put his performance in perspective, Brandon Spikes was a rotational player in the 3-4 and he had 60 some tackles playing next to Mayo who had 150 or some huge number of them.
Different schemes, and just looking at total tackles does not always present a complete picture of one's effectiveness. If a defense endures a lot of sustained drives against it, tackle totals will pile up. A defense gets many 3 and outs and tackle totals will be lessened, for example.
As a dolphins fan, it is not good enough to merely ***** about our own players' performance, it is a duty to point out when other players are doing badly as well. It is the dolfan way.
4-3 MLB should be a tackling machine though Mr C. And allow me to make my prediction now, Marcel Dareus will not be the player many think he will be, that is not to say "bust" not at all, however imo he will be simply a good NFL DT even with Wanny riding heard in Buffalo.
I hope you are right, and I know we do need him to make an impact, because personally I don't see RW or RB coming back.
Oddly enough DJ, I could see both of them returning and Hilliard being shown the egress, RW to platoon with Thomas, and Ronnie B to play the 3rd down back role ie, the "scat back" and act as insurance for RW and DThomas. Head to head they may ask themselves, who are they better off with, Hilliard or Brown? Way someone told me (B14 of NJF1) they watched Hilliard try and block on 3rd downs and he was terrible, they may calculate Ronnie B can at least handle that role.
The best way to calculate a tackling machine MLB though would be his ratio of tackles to downs played. You can't just look at total tackles, because that often means a guy on a defense that's allowing a lot of sustained drives. Since Dareus is on the Bills, I hope he is a big fat bust. Not holding my breath though. For the folks who put a lot of store in the combine, his bench and his vertical were both pretty bad as DLs his size go.
ComPadre, if our RBs are DT and R&R with no Lex, which one is gonna play STs? Usually your 3rd and 4th RB play all the STs, ala Cobbs and Lex last year. Even if Sheets came roaring back, 100%, and made the team as a scat back, he'll be on kick and punt coverage, and one of DT, RB or RW would have to be too. To tell ya the truth, Ronnie B as the up back on punts would be a very prudent idea if he'd go for it. Dude can block as backs go, I'll give him that. No matter what, we cannot be giving up all that hidden yardage that Tony harps on every year. I think he realizes it too, as an area to really focus on.
when you beat teams up on both sides of the LOS JW, like we did, every damn week, teams could not match up with us, they have a few skill positions that are better, but inferior is not a word I would use...We can play with anybody, hell we beat the sh$# out of both teams at the l.o.s that played in the superbowl, That actually happened..Tape don't lie..were better than anyone is going to think..except here.. I tell you what, I'am not pissed at all with Henne going into the year as the starter, it tells me the coaches watched the tape, and knew they'd fu#@ed up.. Were gonna suprise you.. Still got free agency to go...were big, were physical, we have excellent size to athleticism ratio on defense, and now balance on offense, and special teams..
your wrong imo, a loss is not just a loss, if you wanna know what kind of team you project to be, than you cant just look at the letter in the loss column.
I use tackles as they are a more standard measure of how well a MLB in the 4-3 is performing as the DT's job is to keep blockers off of them on running plays. It takes some time for young guys to learn the nuances of playing inside as well, Warren Sapp spoke about some of the stuff he did in college wound up putting him in a straight jacket in the NFL, as for the Combine, imho all it really does is allow players to show their tools, Dareus did some things people like at Alabama but the NFL..different ballgame. Bigger worry about the Bill, imho, is Fitzy continues to grow as a Qb.
Still possible they only keep 1 of RW or RB, Sheets was talking about he wanted to be the starting running back and replace R+R, he did not sound to thrilled at the thought of returning kicks on his WQAM interview. As for the hidden yardage, sure Sparano talks about it so far though ST sort of has to make do with whatever players they like as Developmental guys, an approach I really disagree with but Sparano has done it for 2 of the last 3 seasons, the one time he did not 2009, the ST unit was Top 10. Then in the 2010 preseason he cut Ayodele, Anderson, and a couple of other linebackers who were good at Specials and the unit screwed the pooch and Bono was fired and we all saw what happened, hopefully Sparano learned a lesson from it.
all that cat sheet does is talk, 3 years of talking, I think we've seen him in what 2 preseason games..
You really did not answer my question. Of course it is possible we resign just one of R&R. In your previous post you mentioned what if we jettison Lex and resign both RB and RW. So let's say we just resign RB, and sign Bradshaw as a FA for example. Say Sheets sticks as the 4th Running Back. So we have a depth chart of Bradshaw., Thomas, Brown, Sheets, with Lou as the lone FB again. If Brown is 3rd on the depth chart, he is going to have to play STs most likely. Same as if we resigned both R&R and one or the other was 3rd on the depth chart.
They are a more simple and basic way to measure, but far from more accurate. Say you had one MLB who played 800 snaps and had 110 tackles and another one played 400 snaps and had 70 tackles. By just looking at total tackles you are going to say the 1st one played better, but in actuality the 2nd one was more productive.
