Here's why WR shouldn't be a priority this year

I'm hoping we can get a talented WR that adds big plays to our team in this draft, if thats in round 1 thats fine, maybe its in round 2 or 3, who knows. I think we have enough draft picks and a smart enough front office that we can improve the defense through coaching up the youngsters, free agency and some smart draft picks. I don't think we need to be dead set one way or the other with our draft picks, we should be looking at BPA and needs not just saying to ourselves, 'we have to take all defense'.

 

The same jests that were in the AFC Championship game ???

I hate them as much as any dolfan, but that tact is working for them...

 

Bethea and Ginn. We are a run first team. Sharper is old and coming off of knee surgery and I'm not sure that Atogwe gives us more than we had last year. FS play cost us more games than WR play last year. Even the two games that Ginn takes the most heat for last year (Colts, Saints) our O played well enough to win, it was the D that let us down.

 

Had the Colts not rested Manning they would have been 8-8 and no playoffs....and a 7-9 team beat them twice.

 

You are right, about TOP for the most part...

but on these 2 games, the game plan was just that, run the ball to keep it away from the opponents as much as possible...

Now NO Defense had 10 games (including PS) where they allowed at least 23 points...10 games... and they won 8 (80%) of them...

Now Indi's Defense had 7 games (including PS) where they allowed at least 23 points... 7 games (2 at end of reg season and SB)... and they won 4 (57%) of them...

Indi could have won the last 2 of the reg season, but they sat and rested their Offensive and Defensive starters... that would have left them with winning 6 (86%) out of 7 games...still 4 out of 7 is a winning record...

The Dolphins Defense had 11 games (1 less than the Colts) where they allowed at least 23 points... 11 games...they won 3 (27%) of them...

Now this stat lets me see that this team to win, it must rely heavy on the Defense... in comparison with the other 2 teams... at least the Saints...

Which kind of leads away from your point, which states that the Offense scored enough to win and had TOP, at least in my view...

Over all looking at the data, the Fins had 69% (winning 3 out of 11) of its game, where they had to score more than the Defense allowed (23) to win games. They won 4 out of 5 (80%) when the D allowed less than 23 points...

 

great post Fin D. Our defense, at the minimum has to find a pass rushing terror in this draft, to make it work. Its why the first pick almost has to be a OLB. This is far more important than WR. Our offense moved the ball last year. Could we improve? Sure, but the offense was far more effective than our defense last year. Our defense needs at least one NT and one pass rushing OLB at the bare minimum. Once we get those we can contemplate offensive players

 

Panic mode gets you no where....... the notion we need this complete over haul on defense is just that. Trying to build this invincible defense is just not needed and in the long run, will cause us to come up short anyway.

And that stat he gave on sacks?......he was looking at our offensive numbers. We actually totaled 44 sacks which was tied for 3rd in the NFL...

I mean you guys are going nuts over defense and not even doing that right....you're over exaggerating the need for one position, while basically ignoring the key position we really need to upgrade and that's FS.

An upgrade at ILB and a ball hawking FS would have easily sufficed to upgrade this defense to being more than adequate.

Meanwhile, we have this "almost" terrific offense, that is a serious upgrade at WR and TE away from being a possible top 5 unit. In a league that is now offense driven...

Going with the status quo at those positions will not only have us coming up short of our goal of being a contender, it's a dangerous gamble concerning the progress and future success of our young QB, who is heading into the crucial sophomore season.

Time to wake up and realize that the league has evolved......get with it, or get left behind.

 

I agree, we just need a few pieces on defense, and we could do it now... OLB, NT and S would make our defense good to go.

Get this defense finally built, and then go hard for offensive weapons in 2011.

 

I must admit I'm a little confused by this thread.

Can a team not have more than one priority?

Of course WR is a priority.
We do not have a #1 option period.
There is no debating that.

There is the draft and there is FA.
At the least they need to attempt to address it.

Maybe it's not with any of our high draft picks but at the least they have to take a shot on someone somewhere in the draft or bring in an older Vet who has been in the role before. Something will be done to address this position.
Whether it's enough or not that's a diff. story but to say WR shouldn't be on the priority list for this team makes no sense whatsoever.

 

It's a knee jerk reaction.....with a serious lack of understanding of what our problems on defense actually were last year.

 

Well, that sounds fantastic in theory.

However, that's not how the draft works if you're going to be successful at it.
Lets say you draft a Safety round 1.

That leaves NT and OLB on your list.
In round 2 do you pick a NT or OLB no matter what, regardless if there are higher rated players at other positions? Especially if there is a better talent at WR sitting there which is a position of need as well?

Of course you don't.
That's why you develop a FULL list of needs on your team and don't just pick a few to address. What good is drafting only for position if you leave better players at other positions of need on the board?

 

If the braintrust feels that Bryant's character concerns are overinflated and draft him I will be happy as he is a talent. Having said that, teams like the Packers have had success drafting WR's in the 2nd round.

As another post stated above, we have several major concerns in OLB, FS, NT and WR. It's not that we just need to upgrade talent at these positions but we have glaring holes there. I think based on Parcells history and the need of having OLB's get to the QB that we will be going OLB with our first pick. We can improve our team by drafting the right player at all of those positions.

I think what's important here is we aren't one year away and I'm guessing they are looking not only this year but next year too. We have a lot of guys we will need to resign next year, they may have to make a decision on who to keep at RB, Ferguson is becoming less reliable and when Taylor is gone we have a big problem at OLB. Our team is still young, our QB is still learning the game, we have made a lot of changes and those guys need to play together to develop chemistry and cohesiveness. We aren't one player away at this point.

Short term some may be disappointed that we don't address all of those needs this year but the truth of the matter is we won't find quality starters at all of those spots in this draft. My expectations for this team are to win more games this year and compete for the playoffs this year. I expect us to have a very good team and be a strong playoff caliber team by 2011 with two more drafts, player development and another round of FA.

 

well i think when you have four legitimate needs on defense (2 OLB if JT is let go, NT, FS) and two on offense (WR, TE) defense takes priority since there are more holes. The goal of building a football team is to eliminate exploitable weknesses. You cant do that if you have four holes on one unit. Thats 35% of a unit you could exploit. You can get away with one exploitable weakness, maybe even two but once you get to three and up you simply arent going to compete dominantly. Basically they have to find two impact players on defense. After that any direction they choose is up for grabs

 

I want Dez Bryant at 12 if he is there, but have to say we seemed able to score more last year and our first year (starting) QB had several 300+ yard passing games. If we had an inkling of a FS back there (and Vontae & Sean were a little more experienced) we would have won BOTH those games, we were ahead of both teams in both games.

Yes we need that imposing #1 WR, but even more we need to shore up FS, OLB, ILB (thank heaven we got Dansby) though I'll still be pissed if Dez Bryant is there at 12 and we pass on him (furious would better describe it).

Edit: remember this is waffling month at DD.

 

Where on earth is this statement coming from?

Did I miss somewhere someone saying something that evenly remotely hints at what you just stated in the bolded statement?

I don't think anyone thinks WR alone will bring us to the promised land.
Far from it.

It is however the biggest weakness on the offensive side of the ball.
It's as big a weakness as any position on defense where we need help.

The league has clearly evolved into one where as an offense you better be able to stretch the field and have a weapon that allows you to threaten to strike quickly.

That's all anyone is saying in this thread.
All the positions mentioned are positions of need.
You are the one that picked one out and tried to completely disregard it.

 

Why not trade for a Wr who has potential? Or pick up a veteren Wr via FA as a short term solution?

 

As they say down in my favorite highly disputed archipelago......"you must be out of your Falkland mind"

Well they got 10 more sacks than you originally listed, there's that...

You act like we don't already have some talent on defense, young talent that should likely improve this year. Last season we suffered from Crowder being our main ILB and Wilson struggling at FS.

Shoring up those two spots and re-signing JT are more than enough for one off season. No reason we can't also address the needs on offense as well. As long as the value is there, the need damn sure is.

Funny, some of us watched Ginn drop those passes, watched the better teams in the NFL, put the two together and realized Henne was in desperate need of some help.

 

Well we're also more than just 4 LB'S, a NT, and a FS away as well.....that offense isn't, with those receivers, it's just hard to watch. Courtesy of our dynamic rushing attack, there are SO many opportunities out there to light it up in the air. And you can't ever expect Henne to fully take advantage of them until we get him better talent to work with. That offense could be nasty......that's half the shame in not making it a priority....the other half being not doing everything possible to make sure Henne succeeds this year.

Which should be more important than trying to scratch our way into the playoffs...and force Henne to wait until we figure out just what the hell it is we're doing as far as the WR situation.

Having a preference to go defense first is one thing......saying we're good at WR and can just wait until next year is just short sighted concerning the development of our young QB.

 

i remember shootouts
they didnt work out so well

 

Really because that's how the two SB teams beat us.....and it wasn't just our defense. It's because they excel at rising to the challenge and can light it up when need be. We pushed them and they showed us what it is that we are lacking on offense...

Do you also remember having the sack leader, the leagues leading rusher and a top 5 defense and STILL missing the playoffs due to an inability to stretch the field and make plays in the passing game? And here we are in an era where the passing game is even more important....

 

Yeah, folks keep mentioning the Dan Marino days when we didn't have defense as if that was a dark period of this franchise. Sure we didn't win a superbowl, but we were consistently in the playoffs and had winning seasons almost every year of Dan's career.

When we decided to focus on running game and defense and ignore the QB and passing game, things didn't work out so well for us. Bottom line is it's a mistake to ignore either side of the ball. In today's NFL it takes a good defense and a great offense to be successful.

 

W/o getting into the Ted Ginn sux routine, there's no doubt that a lack of big play ability from this offense hurt us and doesn't allow us to move into the elite group of teams, however, the bulk of our issues last season falls the D, specifically the Black Hole in the middle of the field. Both Crowder and Ayodele were atrocious. Wilson was seemingly 6 inches from the intended target on nearly every play and Bell didn't remind anyone of Ed Reed (or Alto Reed for that matter) by a long stretch. One step has been made with Dansby. That may or may not help Crowder out. Do you rest on that and hope it works out ?? Don't know. We've lost both Porter and JT. Even if JT comes back, he showed his real age and that he is fast losing his edge last season. He can only, at this age, be worse this year, not better.

On offense, we certainly, as I said, need the play-making WR but we also need a TE. If you look down the road, we need to look at replacements for the potential losses of RW, RB and Cobbs. The OL and FB spots seem to be covered. Overall, we have a good group of WR, minus the play-maker.

We've made no moves to shore up the OLBs at all, no successful moves to shore up FS. No other moves, to speak of have been made. We have some youngsters at the OLB in Wake and QMoses and Culver and Clemons at FS. The CBs, particularly assuming Will Allen will be back have some young blood that looks good, but there's little in the secondary (S and CB) outside of the three top CBs. The two FSs I mentioned, you have to take their progress with a grain of salt, since they tried to upgrade the position twice already this FA period, failing at it... NT is a an area of weakness. Soliai has shown some sparks of being a player, but we all know that position requires two warm, fuzzy bodies to survive the season. Fergy is gone for the first 8 weeks of the season. Can Starks and McDaniels hold the fort with Soliai till Fergy returns ?? I'm not convinced.

To sum up...we have to have at least one OLB, perhaps two. We have to have a FS (the FO has shown that to be a priority, even tho they've failed). We have to have a #1 WR. We need a TE, NT. We could use a RB.

Where do we draw the line as to what we can get based on these needs ?? None of us can say that a #1 WR is the most important position we have to fill with all the other holes we have to filled as well. The one difference that folks keep harping on (against a #1 WR) is that we've managed with the group we have so far. Well, that hasn't worked. However, neither has letting the Black Hole develop at the stadium formerly known as Joe Robbie.

I don't think we can ignore any of the positions that are needs, even if getting that guy (take your pick, Dez Bryant, Ro McLain, Jerry Hughes, Derrick Morgan, Dan Williams, JPP or Earl Thomas,) the main man, isn't possible... Perhaps more picks in the second and third would be better than taking Bryant at 12 ?? I don't know, but I know we're far, far from 'one player' away...

 

they also showed us what we are lacking on defense, that being a defense........

 

This is isn't sex, quit exaggerating

 

My preference is to get Henne a weapon with that 12th pick and fix the front 7 in the 2nd to 4th rounds.