Wonder if he heard Hickey say that, or has mandated they do it, or was just speaking off the cuff? Nothing like giving away what could be their 1st round strategy...
Exhibit A of why I still don't believe this team is heading in the right direction. You head into the draft knowing you're forced to pick for need and that you're going to be starting a rookie at a spot where you've got no viable alternative. Oh and the highest you pick in the draft is #19 overall. I don't care what anyone says, that is a sh-tty way to go about the business.
If it were all taken care of by now, he'd be the only one worried. Say the Jags had not driven up the price on Beadles and Strief wasn't so hellbent on staying with the Saints and we got both of them, and our OL was basically set with Albert-Beadles-Pouncey-Smith-Strief...how could that have worried Ross? Damn, we would be sitting pretty to go any direction at all that we wanted to in the draft. Set starting lineup and no glaring needs, although some may consider MLB to be the most significant among them.
The only part that's odd to me is when he said he would be worried if the line was taken care of which makes no sense. But obviously we are going to pick someone to play RT in the draft, he doesn't say say which round though.
What he was trying to do was express that you shouldn't solve these problems in free agency and that you should be using the draft to build your team. In my opinion it's more of the crap that SOUNDS nice but that people don't actually think about. They say you need to build through the draft and usually this is an excuse not to dip into free agency. Except, when your roster is full of holes because of bad personnel management (hence the dismissal of your general manager), you can't afford to wait years until you've enjoyed enough draft success to fill those holes. You get 7 draft picks a year and really only 3 of them probably count and you'll probably walk away with 2 players worth something per year and that's if you're doing a GOOD job. And those 2 players worth something could be anyone. They could be your 1st round pick or your 4th round pick. That's how it goes. So if you're using draft picks to fill specific needs you're rolling the dice on whether you filled it or not. You took an offensive tackle in the 1st round but surprise surprise it's the running back you took in the 3rd round and the defensive tackle you took in the 6th round that end up worth something. But you didn't really have a strong NEED at those positions hence you waited until the 3rd and 6th rounds to address them...and in the mean time you still have this awful hole in your roster at offensive tackle. This is a perfect example of how to underperform your talent acquisition. The other thing is inherent to this strategy is depending on ROOKIES. You know, Golden Tate is a fine player. I applauded when the Lions signed him. But he wasn't sh-t as a rookie. Hardly any of the fine players you look around at the league were worth anything as rookies. Yet we go around pretending the draft is where you fill these immediate needs. It's nonsensical to the point of hilarity. Steve Ross doesn't get it and I'm worried that his attitude is a reflection of what the people under him are saying to him.
Isn't this almost true of the entire NFL since the new CBA? Teams are doing their best to avoid veterans. I don't have any data to back up my theory, but it seems like a lot more teams are looking to fill their holes through the draft.
Some of the oldest players in the league are being avoided but I don't see anything wrong with that. I do see something wrong with heading into a draft picking for need and I think teams that 'get it' are going to outperform the ones that don't. The ones who don't get it have teams that suck and pretend they don't suck by emulating the strategies of the teams that have good rosters. Those crappy teams continue to bang their head against the wall. You'll notice the Arizona Cardinals made heavy use of veterans during the signing period in order to turn around from a 5-11 team to a 10-6 team. The earliest example of this is the Patriots who acquired a bunch of low and mid level veterans before they won their first Super Bowl in 2001. They made the transition from relying on veterans to relying on their home-grown talent. But they didn't do it until they'd home-grown some worthy talent. And they also have a good sense for when their drafting has been failing and they need to supplement with veterans. Just because you acquire veterans doesn't mean you have to acquire 34 year old veterans, even though those too have their place if their talent level is still high enough. You know what DOESN'T happen when you acquire cheap veterans whose talents you understand and know how to use? You don't turn your draft picks into the commissioner and say well I'm building through free agency so here's all my draft picks, I don't need them. You're still making draft selections and you still have a team soft enough at certain positions (because free agency is far from a perfect solution) that a truly standout rookie can get onto the field.
I agree with everything you're saying CK. Other side of the coin just as important... coaching/development. If you don't have good teachers, it's harder to build through draft.
I think what's out there for Oline talent as vets will still be there after the draft. I think a lot of the RBs will still be sitting there as well. I think we should be signing Moreno today unless he's asking for some ridiculous amount of money. 3 years at maybe 3 mil a year at most. Guys like McKinnie, Wharton, or whatever vet is out there we can sign after the draft.
It depends on the evaluation method you use. If you strictly evaluate the individual moves within a vacuum you'd say it's mixed. He gave a lot of money to a 30 year old tackle with a recent history of injuries that seemed like he couldn't consistently bring his athletic ability to the field every snap anymore because of his physical condition. He gave a lot of money to a corner like Finnegan who hasn't played well since 2011, also has battled injuries being an undersized guy, and whose intensity level after receiving a payday from St. Louis leads to questions about his character and commitment. Then again he gave smaller amounts of money to two undervalued guys in Shelley Smith and Earl Mitchell, one of whom you could easily imagine turning into a gem of a free agent signing. The re-signings were good. He kept the Brent Grimes contract amount from inflating into indigestible territory. He re-signed Randy Starks which seemed like the best of the defensive tackles but the least likely to actually re-sign. All in all it's a big more good than bad if you limit the evaluation strictly to what he DID do and you don't consider things he DIDN'T do. However when you do consider the opportunities passed up, that's where I think the evaluation starts to slip. We headed into the season needing 4 out of 5 OLs replaced and so far we've replaced 2 of them which means that we may have to replace another 2 with rookies. I appreciate the talent that Branden Albert is and hopefully he's got 1 of the 4 positions locked down, however even banging Shelley Smith's drum as I've been for a long while I don't think he's ever been more than a roll of the dice. He has like 7 starts under his belt as a pro, something very small like that. His anchor and pass pro abilities are very much in question. I may have a pet theory you can mitigate some of that by putting him at left guard but it's just a pet theory and I've never said otherwise. So really if you head into the 2014 NFL season with Branden Albert, Shelley Smith, Mike Pouncey and two rookies then you're heading into the 2014 NFL season with three coin flips and two genuine starters. And one of those genuine starters seems to have a bad habit of missing 4 or 5 games a year. That's not fixing the offensive line. At least, it's not fixing it in time for Joe Philbin NOT to get fired. Maybe the rookies on the OL pan out but that's an EVENTUAL thing...not a RIGHT NOW thing. And for those Tannehill fans out there you'll be lucky to see Ryan survive a new coaching staff without seeing a significant investment in someone to compete and/or take his job. Just a warning. We still also seem to have this problem at the linebacker positions. It's kind of a structural problem mixed with some misevaluation and we're not sure that Hickey has really done anything but punt the issue down the field. Then you've got the running back spot. I get that they want a rookie for this. But that's not going to help with pass protection and pass catching, in all likelihood...since rookies generally have to take some time to absorb those more intellectual based pursuits. Just take the broader view of this for a moment. Is the team any better today than in 2013? Is the offensive line today with Branden Albert, Shelley Smith, Mike Pouncey and two rookies set to be any better than it was with Martin/McKinnie, Incognito/Garner, Pouncey, Jerry and Clabo? I'm really not sure of that. Maybe. It's kind of a coin flip and when you consider how BAD the offensive line was a year ago and how much more that football team could've done if the line had even been just mediocre...that's not a coin I want to be flipping. I don't want the question of whether this line is better or not to be a coin flip. Is the defense better? You sub out Soliai for Mitchell, is that better? I say no. Is Clemons to Delmas better? Looks pretty even. Is Carroll/Patterson to Finnegan better? Looks even at best. The 8-8 team that we saw in 2013 wouldn't be 8-8 in 2014, IMO. Not with the improvements we're seeing to the competition. Miami has to get better and I'm not sure I've seen them get better and for that reason no I don't think I can say that Hickey is doing a "pretty good job" yet. Need to see more. Off season isn't over yet. Draft hasn't happened yet. But need to see a LOT more.
You guys know how sometimes we say a GM has an eye for RB talent, or DL talent??? Have any of you draft gurus evaluated yourselves to see where your eye for talent may lie?
To go on a different tangent now, I think all eyes will be on the lengthy corners because of the whole Seattle thing. This draft looks like it's got about five that fit. They are: Stanley Jean-Baptiste, Dontae Johnson, Keith McGill, Pierre Desir and Walt Aikens. The one I have really yet to look at is Pierre Desir. I hear a lot about him but I'm not sure whether I will like him or not. I do know that I have looked at Walt Aikens and Keith McGill and they strike me as guys that are being pushed up because they have unique height rather than because they show anything interesting on the field. Stanley Jean-Baptiste I think compares very favorably to Brandon Browner. I did a lot of studying of Browner recently for free agency and Jean-Baptiste models similarly. They both love to get physical at the line and erase players with physical aggressiveness and length. Jean-Baptiste is not quite as aggressive as Browner yet but the attitude is there so I think the increased aggressiveness would come with more confidence and coaching. They're both practically impervious when covering receivers man to man over the middle on drag routes and the like. You just can't attack them that way. I think Stanley Jean-Baptiste has a little bit more "young legs" when it comes to making sharp cuts with his back turned in man coverage trying to defend against lateral breaks or curls and the like. This is the part of Browner's game which is probably going to slip first as he gets older. On the other hand, Jean-Baptiste has a tendency to get beat over the top that I haven't seen Browner happen to in a while. The more I look at this tendency the more I tend to see it as more of an aggressiveness/mental issue for Jean-Baptiste as opposed to being unable to keep up from a pure speed standpoint. Perhaps it's a little bit of a give-and-take with respect to the ability I talked about before to cut sharp and defend underneath breaks from man. They both can have some problems in off or zone coverage but on the other hand both players Browner and Jean-Baptiste show a lot of awareness and intelligence to go along with ball skills. I wouldn't call either of them off cover specialists but I wouldn't call it a weakness, either. I think Stanley Jean-Baptiste is somewhere between a B+ and A- in perimeter support. He really understands the concept and importance of setting the edge and getting his shoulder up the field, free of the blocker in order to keep the ball from bouncing to the outside. He's a pretty good tackler, even adjusting for his immense size. The other guy I talked about earlier is Dontae Johnson and he reminds me of Antonio Cromartie except he's got much better ability to defend the run. The disadvantage he has to Cromartie right now is more notoriety based. Because he doesn't have a great name at the moment, people are looking at his size and deciding he should be a safety. He needs to be given a valid shot at a corner position and I think he is unique in that he can also play the slot corner position. Where I think Cromartie and he differ is that Cromartie probably had a better feel for when to open his hips in off coverage.
As for what I don't like about Keith McGill, it's all in the hips there. They're so bad that they can't be salvaged. At least, they can't be salvaged as a corner. Let's say he's in a deep zone, press-bail at the snap with his face turned to the quarterback as he goes back into a zone. If the ball comes underneath to a breaking receiver, he can't cut to track the break until he gets a good 7 or 8 yards further. It's that bad. His hips are so bad that even in tight quarters breaking down in the open field with evenly matched leverage and balance, he can get beaten by by RAC guys running around him. Right now he's a zone player that plays a lot with his shoulders square to the line. When the ball comes underneath him with his shoulders squared, his click and close ability is fantastic. He's a good athlete though a long strider for a corner. But if you're asking him to use his hips or chop his steps and mirror a quick wide receiver, it's over. This is a guy that is BEGGING to be played at safety. He's big and powerful. His forward click and close ability should translate well to a position where he starts deep and then has to run the alley underneath. As a safety he won't have to show as good hips as corners do on the perimeter. He can cover tight ends and backs without having to worry as much about being mismatched in terms of physical ability. And he's fast. I think he runs like a 4.51 at 6'3" and 211 lbs. But for heaven's sake do not put this guy at corner unless you want to be burned constantly.
Ck, Are both these corners bad fits for our scheme or do you think either could help us change or scheme up?
I doubt they'd be considered GOOD fits for what Kevin Coyle prizes in his corners. I think they can play in Miami's scheme but that's different from targeting them for it. What I think is that you should be able to make room in your scheme for what these guys do because they're so compelling doing it. You don't have to give up the off man coverage at all in order to put these guys in great position for your scheme. But you will have to adapt to get them more press man opportunities. I just don't see what's wrong with that. You should be taking good football players and adapting your scheme to fit them.
I have mentioned before that if Brandin Cooks isn't worthy of a 1st round pick then philosophically you start to wonder if it's even possible for a 5'10" and 190 lbs wide receiver to be worthy of a 1st round pick. He's as fast as you get for that size. He's about as quick. He's got all the RAC skills. Unlike a Tavon Austin he's got tons of experience running real routes and catching footballs against real coverage. And he produced. He had 128 catches for 1730 yards and 16 TDs, and not in some gimmicky offense or with a ridiculous QB talent throwing him the ball. The same way I feel about Brandin Cooks at 5'10" and 190 lbs is the same way I feel about Jeremy Gallon at 5'8" (actually half an inch shy of that) and 185 lbs. I told I believe Stitches that I'd get around to watching him eventually because I'd seen flashes that made me intrigued as hell despite the size disadvantage. Jeremy Gallon is just such a paradoxical football player. One of the big reasons you don't like a 5'8" wide receiver is because with the football on the air heading into a direction where you've got your wide receiver and one or maybe even two defensive backs, it's just hard to trust that the ball is in safe hands with a 5'8" player at the other end of the rope. Yet FINISHING catches is exactly where Jeremy Gallon looks so superb. It's nothing short of amazing the catches he's able to finish in traffic while dealing with physical coverage. Low, high, body catches, catches outside his frame, on the run, etc...he can catch everything. He's not immune to dropping an easy one every now and again (nobody is), but the catches he's capable of all the way around are pretty amazing on a 5'8" player. He can really go sky high for the ball. He catches the football through blatant pass interference. If I laud the 6'2" and 220 lbs Allen Robinson for his ability to catch the football despite blatant interference, what does it say about a 5'8" and 185 lbs guy that he can do the same? He also produced. His 89 catches and 1373 yards, 9 TDs might be in its own way even more amazing than Cooks' production simply because he had Devin Gardner throwing the football as opposed to Sean Mannion. Gallon was just that good at beating coverage and creating separation, adjusting on the football in the air and finishing the catch. Gallon is easily as good as you'd hope a 5'8" player would be after the catch. He's got great natural instincts and make-you-miss ability. He's got legit 4.4 speed. Even better, he flashes ability to stay balanced through contact that for a small dude I can probably only compare to Steve Smith. The real problem goes back to why you're nervous about small receivers in the first place. You're throwing the football in the air where anyone can get it. It's tough to trust that a 5'8" player is going to have the best chance at that football. It puts a lot of pressure on the QB to get his ball placement just right and/or to err on the side of caution with respect to throwing the football high or low. This also puts extreme pressure on Gallon himself to always be quicker and faster than the guy covering him. He has to get better than the rest of the guys out there at consistently beating man coverage and forcing his coverage to get into catch-up mode where he can't use his hands as well, doesn't have as good balance, doesn't have the ability to set up or box out for the football, etc. Particularly the latter, if Gallon's man coverage is ever able to stay step for step with him without having trouble and getting off balance or being forced to run out as hard as he can, etc...then all the sudden you've got a 5'8" and 185 lbs guy next to a 5'11" 205 lbs or whatever guy and they're even for the football. That can be scary. You will have to trust that Gallon is consistently creating separation to put that guy off balance. True conundrum player. Hard to know what to do with him. He looks like a flat out better football player than some of the guys I've got ranked above him. But his size tangibles are so out-of-the-ordinary that I have to put him down the board. But if we're talking about Jeremy Gallon in three years the way we did Andrew Hawkins, count me unsurprised.
I feel strongly both ways. While it's fine that he got Albert, why is he worth so much more than Monroe??? He ain't but we paid it. Earl Mitchell, no complaints at all. Resigning Randy was a great bargain, but... 11 mil for 2 yrs of Finnegan??? Looks like a major overpay to me. Probably many free agents who'd like to hire Finnegan to be their agent. Shelley Smith looks like a good signing, though why not tie him up for a 3rd year for another 2.5 mil? Hickey's not adding two more starting quality vets doesn't sit well with me. If he rounded out the line with Wharton and Winston, I'd feel much better going into the draft. With the pending possible chance that Pouncey misses some games, a veteran C like Velasco would make sense too. IMO. I'd actually feel pretty good about us signing Will Montgomery to play LG and be backup C too.
So I've been (slowly) working through the defensive tackles which requires charting every run and pass snap. I've gotten through Aaron Donald, Sutton, Hageman, Jernigan and DaQuan Jones. If you haven't been following along with the hype, let me just tell you that as I keep working on different aspects of the metrics, Donald just blows everyone away. His pass rush rate was 6.2 which means he's pressuring/ sacking the QB once every 6.2 snaps. That's what'd you expect from Clowney, Barr, etc. The next best are Hageman and Sutton who are tied around 12.5 which ain't too shabby (I've got Jernigan somewhere around 18 and Jones around 21). In terms of run stops either behind the LOS or within 2 yards, Donald comes in with the second highest rate of impact tackles behind only Jernigan (7.2 vs. 9.4). I've also been messing around with run stops by gap. Which is to say, if the DT is lined up over the right side A gap where did the run go relative to that alignment? I've found over the 5 DTs that around 40% of their tackles will be within 1 gap distance. 55% of Jernigan's tackles were within 1 gap distance. It's not a definitive measure and it's still something I'm messing with, but I figure the more tackles you have (close to the LOS) that are further from the original alignment shows a player with more range in the run game. While the average for 1 gap away tackles is 40% and Jernigan had 55%, Donald's was 32%. Another 32% of tackles were 3 or more gaps away. Just on the face of this metric, Donald by far has the most range in the run game. I'm still playing around, extracting more data, but this is your daily reminder that Aaron Donald is awesome.
Well if you really think about it, it's just a pretty decent wide receiver class. I have him somewhere around #11 to #13 down the wide receiver board and that's not such a bad insult.
Specifically? Odell Beckham, Marqise Lee, Bruce Ellington, Robert Herron, Donte Moncrief and Davante Adams. And I know a lot of people that would probably stick Kelvin Benjamin and Paul Richardson in above Jordan Matthews though I do not.
Also when I look at Mike Evans, I can't help but think of David Boston (before the steriods). I really hope he stays out of the AFC East.
I know that this is just a theory but in my opinion, David Boston's downfall was his commitment to body building as opposed to football. If you don't think Mike Evans has that kind of thing going for him then he should be fine that way. On the other hand there are definitely some indications Evans might have Boston's same punkishness.
David was an egomaniac once he had some success in the pros, wich was almost immediately. Good friend of mine was a WR on the roster with him, said Boston was a loner but intense as hell. HATED losing. Kind of the Albert Belle of the group. He always was a workout warrior but it intensified once he had the means to hire his infamous PT. That's a sad story because if he had stayed clean he would've had a monster career, he was the Lebron James of WRs inthe NFL from a physical standpoint, then after his breakout season he became intrigued with drugs and obsessed with his physique. Self destruction at its finest.
I think Morgan Moses is a better possibility at #19 overall than people think and probably has a better chance of being taken there than Zack Martin, who is the guy everyone currently has pegged in their mocks at #19. Morgan Moses played at UVA under Bill Lazor for three years, 2010 to 2012. He played right tackle for Lazor in 2011 and 2012. My personal opinion is that Dennis Hickey's OLs tend to be big monsters. His guards tend to look like tackles. His right tackles (thinking of Jeremy Trueblood and Demar Dotson) tend to be ogres. Jeremy Trueblood was 6'8" and 316 lbs. Demar Dotson was 6'9" and 306 lbs. Well, Morgan Moses fits. He is a little over 6'6" and 311-325 lbs (325 lbs at Senior Bowl, 314 lbs at Combine, 311 lbs at Pro Day), with 35 inch arms and a wingspan just an eighth below 84 inches (7 feet). His wingspan is bigger than NBA bigs like Kevin Love and Blake Griffin. Moses did not have a strong Combine but he repeated the 40 at his pro day and ran somewhere between between 4.9 and 5.06 which is incredible. He pulled a hamstring during the run, too. And Miami had dinner with his linemate Luke Bowanko that night, who had the following to say about Moses to reporters during the Pro Day: Could Miami have been having dinner with a UDFA type like Luke Bowanko simply because they were interested in him? I suppose. Bill Lazor may secretly harbor a crush on Bowanko from when he coached him back at UVA and it may have been enough to sway Hickey into spending valuable time eating dinner with this kid even though he looks like UDFA of no significant merit on film. However if Miami wanted to "fill the gap" of the timeline they don't know about with Moses, which is 2013 when Bill Lazor left Virginia to coach at Philadelphia, then a good way to do that is to have a nice private conversation with a teammate of his. I happen to know some things about Dennis Hickey's questioning tactics and Tampa from people that are involved with the team here, and let's just say he's thorough enough to think of this. Right now Morgan Moses is not considered a strong enough prospect to be a 1st rounder. But you know what? Neither was Chandler Jones at this time before his draft. Or a hundred other prospects. What often happens is at the 11th hour news of who the teams are targeting starts to filter to the media and suddenly the media start giving little cute hints about players "rising" and teams being much higher on certain players than the media, etc. Happens the other way around too. I think what could happen is on the eve of the draft you start to here a lot more about Morgan Moses the 1st round prospect who has a monster frame and runs a 4.9, etc. He's my chalk favorite for the pick. I'll stick him in my mocks. Until I change my mind.
If he's a realistic target than I would do my best to trade back and maybe add a 3rd. Arizona may scare us as far as swiping him up but worst case scenario we can get that extra pick in this fantastic draft. I sure wouldn't be upset if we grabbed a Verrett then turned around and filled RT with Richardson or Mewhort.
Could be a run on DTs, if any combination of Hageman, Nix, Jernigan, Donald all started going a team might be inclined to jump up. That seems to be the most likely opportunity to trade back, unless WRs start going early.
I've been disappointed you stopped using the Bootstrap nickname for Billy Turner that you had used when you first found him. I didn't understand it until like a month later when it randomly hit me where it was from and then I felt pretty dumb.
Potential 7th rounder/undrafted FA: WR, Erik Lora out of Eastern Illinois couldn't help but notice the guy, while watching Jimmy Garopollo highlights. Dude catches everything and has good run after the catch ability. 2012: 136 rec. 1664 yds, 12 TD 2013: 123 rec. 1544 yds, 19 TD
