After mulling it over this weekend, OLB Eric Norwood will be returning to South Carolina for his senior year. Woo hoo! I mean......good for us, bad for the NFL. Now if we can just get Bill, Jeff, and Tony to grab Jasper Brinkley in April.
Jasper lays the wood. He would look nice in the meat grinder in our 3-4. But then you'd have to question whether we have the coverage skills in our linebacking unit that we need...especially with Matt Roth at SOLB. Then you talk about a Brandon Spikes...and you have to say, he'd definitely give us pass rush, and he can read the QB's eyes and make athletic plays on the ball in coverage...and he can lay the big hit...but he wouldn't look as good in the meat grinder as Jasper. Is Channing Crowder good enough to make up for all that?
Spikes would be good and imo have the ability to play in or out. It's a question of opportunity cost- we have greater needs.
Isn't Jasper Brinkely rated as a 3rd or 4th rounder as of right now? I would not mind taking him in either of those rounds.
Good decision for Norwood. He can go back and really concentrate on getting into the top 25 or so picks in a year. I'm hugely underwhelmed by the group of senior and junior MLB's; Jasper, like Chris says, is a slobberknocker of a player, but when Porter doesn't cover, Roth struggles and Channing is just average, that's a pretty big issue, especially when you don't have ballhawking safeties who are great cover guys, then Jasper in coverage is a problem. Now Kevin Burnett is very good in coverage, but he's not a banger in the true sense. Dansby does a little of both. Spikes is superior in coverage in terms of reading and jumping routes. He tends to sit and work from a zone rather than in man, but that's fine. Again though, he's not aggressive playing the run and is more like Crowder in that respect. Darry Beckwith can cover and get sideline to sideline, but again he's not overly forceful going forward. Joe Pawelek if he comes out is an interesting kid. He's strong downhill and not bad at all on coverage. He won't blow you away on the athleticism front, but .......
Yeah, that's where I was hoping to get him as he's flying under the radar a bit right now. But, come combine time, he will turn some heads again when they see how fast the 6-2 270 pounder can run. Jasper can put on a clinic when it comes to tackling, he can hit, and he can get to the QB. But, like Chris and Simon said, he's not the greatest in coverage. I still think he would be an upgrade though, and ad nauseum, a "parcells like" player.
