I think that the plan was for him to be "the nickel guy." If I had to guess, this one has Flores's finger prints on it. It is weird because Flores has done a fantastic job with guys with much less talent, and Noah just looks bad. Who knows? It is super early, and he is young. What scares me though is that they really looked to solidify that position in the offseason.
I can see some of our fellow babies standing on the wall at a party, complaining about everything going on around them. "Nobody likes these songs. The DJ sucks." "What time is it? I'm ready to go." "We should be hanging out at the Foxboro prom. It looks like they're having fun over there." "Or Orchard Park..." "I should have gone to work tonight." Meanwhile, there's a floor full of happy people dancing, singing, whooping, hollering and generally having a ball. Sometimes, folks just don't want to enjoy themselves.
I wasn't ever upset about it. I think his ability and potential are pretty clear when you watch him. I'm more curious about how we plan to use him and that was really my thought right from the start. At first it left me scratching my head going huh? A TE? We have Gesicki! Now, I also only watched round 1 of the draft as I spent the rest of my weekend outside working in my yard so the update I saw on my phone left me wondering early on. Then I watched him and went... hmm. well this is interesting on quite a few levels. The one thing I can say about it though is we sure appear to have some nice weapons on offense now between Gesicki/Long and Parker, Fuller and Waddle. Damn! If this works out there's going to potentially be some interesting choices opposing defenses are going to have to make.
Drafting Long helps Tua and the rushing attack. Teams are going to be in dime against us for half of the game. If Tua has time to make his reads and does a good job of following his progression, he should have a significant bounce.
