ESPN's coverage of our free agent signings

[CJD]

(03-17-2021, 12:15 AM)Murdock2420 Wrote: Other sites have different rankings.

The guy may write for ESPN but that doesn't mean he was the guy who put together the rankings. It even says the article has Multiple Contributors.

The reactions from the guy on ESPN mirror those of Joe Goodberry who has tweeted he'd rather have Jackson, would rather have Lawson and would rather have Alexander.

See here:

I'd rather have the man cover guys. That's more valuable and that skillset will outlast Lou Anarumo's vision/time in Cincinnati. https://t.co/0q439PP2yl

— Goodberry (@JoeGoodberry) March 16, 2021

 

I'm glad to see them getting guys signed, but after all the Tobin talk of not sitting on our hands, all we've done is replace guys we lost. Not one single player that has been signed is going to be here to replace a guy who was bad last year.

Lawson wasn't bad rather or not you want to say Hendrickson is better.

WJIII wasn't bad, again doesn't matter if Awuzie is better in your eyes.

Alexander, was good, and maybe you view Hilton as better.

The problem remains that guys who were shit... are still here, still shit and still not being improved upon.

We literally are treading water as a 4 win team. That isn't how you jump to a 8 to 10 win team.

If the person writing the grades disagrees with the website's top 100 list to this extreme of a degree, then I'd recommend he just not link the top 100 ranking in his description of why he doesn't like the signing that his website's top 100 list implies was a good signing. Then at least he'd be able to say "yea, I didn't write that and I disagree with it, so I'm not linking it to my article." The linking of the article is an implicit agreement with its content. I would never link an article I disagree with to anything I write. It makes him look foolish to say "this was a cheap replacement signing that is typical Bengals" when the website he's writing this on has already come out to rank the "cheap replacement" as a better player than the person being replaced. Similar notes with Trey at 7 vs Lawson at 37. It doesn't really matter what is correct (I personally wanted Lawson over Hendrickson), but it's about journalistic consistency. It's hard to take an article seriously when it blatantly contradicts itself like that.

As for Joe, I understand where he's coming from. Waynes, Hilton and Awuzie is a very different set of CBs than WJIII, Alexander and Phillips (granted, we still have Phillips as our #4, which is excellent depth in my opinion). I don't know the degree to which these three are deficient at man coverage relative to their zone capabilities, but I hope this doesn't lock us into a scheme after we inevitably fire Lou next season (we should have done it, in addition to firing Zac, in January). 

I like the idea of getting two corners for the price of one, especially since we desperately need to sign some Olinemen, so in that regard I definitely like the idea of signing Hilton and Awuzie over just signing WJIII (42 million for WJIII vs 45.75 million for Awuzie + Hilton) if it means we have enough cap space left to get a Riley Reiff level player to play RT or a Gabe Jackson/Rodney Hudson to fill OG/C. Then all we'd need to do is resolve the other Oline position and we'd be able to go BPA in the draft, for the most part (we still need another pass rusher and a DT if we cut Atkins, but we won't be doing that at 5).

I hope our FO and coaching staff knows what they're doing, but honestly, we all know they don't.