01-12-2022, 12:11 PM
(01-09-2022, 04:58 AM)Wyche Wrote: Me either Cards, me either. Andy shoulda sued em for criminal negligence.
I despised that pick from the moment they made it.
I respect Paul Alexander as a OL guru for his entire body of work. he gets judged harshly for how things ended here and his closeness to the ownership. Regardless, the dude was a genius when it came to grooming OL for a long time.
However, I'll still never understand how a guy that groomed monster tackles like Anderson, Whitworth and Smith up and decided to start drafting power forwards instead of offensive linemen to re-shape a philosophy that had been working for him for a very long time.
That draft was key in killing this team for more than half a decade. It's not Bill Walsh to the Niners level history-altering, but it's impact was still disastrous for a really long time. Hell, they still haven't gotten to the point where the line is even playing at an acceptable level since.
People (self included) blame Troy Blackburn for letting Whit walk and view it as the end of the OL in the Marvin era, but in reality nobody would have been nearly as upset if Ced or Fisher would have been even decent replacements. They had a contingency plan for replacing Whit. Unfortunately it was a really bad one.
