A Sleeping Giant

[Truck_1_0_1_]

(01-05-2020, 02:45 PM)samhain Wrote: I think expectations should be kept low for now.

I'm not overly hyped over the state of the roster as others are. Some of the guys people are getting excited about have very small sample sizes in terms of games played. Playing well is better than playing shitty, but sustained ability to play at a high level in the league is yet to be determined for many of these guys. This is not only true for the guys here, but (even moreso) for Burrow as well. That said, I'll grant that the roster seems to be in a better state than it was at the end of 18.

The thing I think that helps them now is the fact that the staff has a year under their belt. It's not going in blind anymore. Hopefully the improvements on defense and o-line are long-term ones and not just success against bad teams at the end of a lost season. We should see if the end of the year was a dead cat bounce or the start of something positive relatively quickly next season.

It's saying something that Taylor apparently hasn't lost the locker room after this horrendous year. That's something to build on.

From a roster perspective, I'm trying to see this offseason like the 2011 year when Carson left. At time there were pieces in place on the defense, but still work to do. They made an effort to add in the secondary and linebacker groups. They drafted 2 cornerstone offensive players that would sustain relative success for almost 10 years, This year, they have even better draft position, so that helps. They also got a lineman that would start for 8 years. After that, the 2012 and 2013 drafts added Dre, Zeitler, Gio, and Eifert to round out a pretty impressive roster of young talent.

Unless the staff shits the bed, they'll get another year or so to build IMO. I look at 2022 as the year that they'll be built to compete for something real. That should be enough to bring in a core of young talent for another 8-10 years.

Even then, that's not right.

People should come in with *0* expectations; no positive, no negative, no low, no high.

Just take things as they come and wait until we actually get concrete things happening.