Mothership Article on Tyler Guyton

[Whatever]

(02-02-2024, 12:43 PM)ochocincos Wrote: What are people's thoughts on gambling on a rookie to start on the OL in general?
Has the performance of the RTs the past few years made you think, "How much worse could it be?"

Reiff was solid, to be fair.  Not spectacular, but solid.

I'm normally very pro free agency for the OL.  However, this is a bad FA OT class.  The best you might get is a Jonah level stopgap for a year or two.  It's a very strong OT draft class, though.  

Another issue is that the current group's big weakness is lack of athletic ability across the board.  It's hampered us in the run game and frankly, we all saw how Jonah just didn't have the athletic ability to match up with freaks like Watt and Garrett twice a year.  There are a number of absolute freak OT's in this class, Guyton being one.  That athletic ability issue won't get fixed with 30+ year old stopgaps.  To improve they will have to have to replace expiring contracts with athletic draftees.  This year, the draft class aligns with the hole Jonah will leave.  If this was a bad T class, then I would be more for a stopgap option to get us through until there was a good class.  But this is the best class I've seen in forever. 

I think ultimately, they will FT Tee and re-up Reader.  They probably go after one of the top FA TE's and sign a cheap vet like Cody Ford to compete with Smith and Carman if the board doesn't fall right.  Based on history, if Higgins gets the tag, they will draft a WR in the 1st or 2nd(Bates-Hill, AJ-Higgins, MJ-Hunt).  RT will in all likelihood be the other pick, imo.  I do not think they will see NT as a big need if they resign/replace Reader.  We were 7th in run D in '21 and 5th in '22 with the exact same DL and LB's we fielded this year.  Lou stated that the turnover in the secondary really affected the LB play due to communication issues and that's logically what they will chalk up the run D struggles to, not the DL.