10-02-2019, 04:40 PM
(10-02-2019, 03:18 PM)Joelist Wrote: The rebuild is probably needed. Our problem is ownership seems incapable of understanding that the ONLY effective way to build winning football teams is from the lines out. If your lines are effective everything else works a lot better - if they are not nothing works properly.
To be honest you don't need high first round picks at WR or TE or even RB if your line is good, because then they have the needed time for plays to develop. It also applies to QB. A good line and the QB has time to scan the field and find the best target. A bad line (or a horrific line like ours) and the QB is all messed up with no time to scan the field, having to get rid of the ball immediately and a messed up internal clock.
This also applies to Defensive Line. Ours is barely average (sorry but it is true) in that they only intermittently get pressure and are absolutely clownish at the basic football task of sealing the edges. Our LB issues get magnified enormously because our DL is incompetent at this basic task. And their near total lack of push and pressure gives the opposing QB a nice, big pocket and plenty of time to scan the field and do their thing.
This is an ownership who has spent three of their last five first round picks on the O-line - and in that time period also a second round pick and traded for a lineman with a top 5 salary in the franchise - so I think they get that.
They actually got criticized for going back-to-back O-line in that infamous 2015 draft as it wasn't a position of immediate need.
So they have addressed the problem but talent assessment (or development?) has let them down. That 2015 draft killed us.
I'm surprised there haven't been more changes in the scouting department because that draft was a shocker. Two tackles, a linebacker, a TE, even a corner and a safety - that's almost exactly this off-season's shopping list and it's because we've come out of the draft with almost nothing: a rotational TE.
