Lou’s Future in the Jungle

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(01-13-2023, 11:04 AM)Sled21 Wrote: Doesn't matter if they were good outside of Zimmer's scheme, because they played in that scheme and were good in it. ZImmer called Peko in his prime THE best NT in the game. Hall was outstanding. You wouldn't say Dunlap in his prime was a superior talent? 
Look, I'm not saying Zimmer wasn't good, he was one of my favorite coaches. That said, I don't believe his players played as hard for him as Lou's do for him. And I truly think Lou and his coaches are much better at developing the backups all the way down the depth chart than any Bengal coach ever on either side of the ball.

What's Zimmer supposed to say? His guy sucks? Lol... We know that's not true because he wasn't Vince Wilfork, or Haloti Ngata, or Casey Hampton (off the top of my head). Peko wasn't even a top-2 NT in his own division. He wasn't bad, but he wasn't great, and he's certainly nowhere near DJ Reader good.

Compared to Hendrickson? Dunlap was good and started young and managed to stay relevant for a long time, but he never had the ceiling performance that Hendrickson is showing. In 3 seasons as a starter Hendrickson already has more double digit sack seasons than Dunlap, and it's spanning two defenses/DCs so it's not even a Lou thing.

How can we possibly measure if a player is playing harder for one guy or another? As I said, Lou's defense has been below average in scoring defense in 3/4 years. Zimmer's was top-10 in 4/6 years. If Zimmer's guys weren't playing hard and still managed to regularly get top-10 defenses then Zimmer is even better than I thought.

What? You talked about the Fisher Price DL, well all three of those guys, Michael Johnson, Carlos Dunlap, and Geno Atkins, were all backups that were developed from 3rd, 2nd, and 4th rounds. Not to mention the tons of rejects and has-beens who either found their career reinvented or rejuvenated here under Zimmer's scheme. Lol... as for "ever on either side of the ball"... Bob Bratkowski stopped evolving with the NFL, but his first year here was when Chad, Housh, Rudi all got drafted and started being developed. Willie also hit a whole new level when Brat came around, too.