What draft pick would you have changed for Oline?

[BengalChris]

(04-30-2017, 10:20 PM)bfine32 Wrote: I'm seeing both on here and Nationally that our draft is taking ahit because we "did not address the oline",So my question is to you and them: What Olineman would you have taken in the first 4 rounds instead of the players we got?

I mentioned first 4 rounds because a few folks are saying we should have taken Player X instead of the kicker in the 5th (BTW, we needed a kicker). So instead of complaining tell me who you would have taken

For starters you have to go back to free agency where a bad O-line got worse by losing its top two players. Signing Andre back was good, but he missed several games last year on IR.

Combine the lack of action by the team in free agency and a weak O-line draft and what's left of our weak O-line from last year and you can understand why not just Bengals fans are a bit puzzled about the lack of improvement through the draft.

Next, Mike Brown does not value interior linemen and there's tons of evidence to support making that statement again and again and again. I was hoping we'd have drafted Whitehair last year but we didn't. Of course he ended up being one of the top centers in the NFL last year as a rookie while we drafted another corner who didn't contribute his rookie, just like the previous two corners we drafted.

As for what the team could have done in the draft, it could have done a lot actually. There was a lot of trade action in this draft and even the Bengals made two trades. While there weren't any O-linemen worthy of a top 10 pick in this draft, we had trade down and trade up options in the first three rounds that could have dramatically improved the O-line.

San Diego, picking only a few picks in front of us managed to grab Lamp and Feeney. Minnessota traded up to get Elflien just in front of Feeney, Jacksonville traded up to grab Robinson, so there was a trade there to be had.

Let's face it we rolled the dice in the first two rounds and that left no room to actually improved the O-line as we weren't going to miss out on defense in a very strong defensive draft.