02-12-2018, 02:21 PM
(02-12-2018, 10:24 AM)muskiesfan Wrote: I partially agree with your statement. I love Whitworth and he should have retired a Bengal, however I can understand the thought process of moving on if that's what the team felt was in their best interest. I don't believe that was entirely the case though. According to Lewis, he thought Whit was coming back. Whether that he was his actual thought process or his way of playing the game to try and drive down Whit's market, I don't know. He did go around the combine telling everyone Whit was in the fold.
Another part of moving on is you have to have a back up plan in place. In limited action, Shawn Williams looked like he could potentially step up into Nelson's spot. So the team deciding to go young at that position made some sense. In the Whit situation, Ced had not shown he was able to step in and be an NFL caliber player. He played horribly the season prior, finally got benched, and when put back in, shit the bed again. The only things that Ced has proven is that he is not capable of being a starter in the NFL and that guys Paul Alexander truly believe in turned out to be hot garbage. Ced and Bodine are 2 guys that Alexander hand picked and stood up for at every turn.
I agree they needed a back up plan in place we had a first and second round pick sitting on the bench to replace both tackles that was our plan. But the plan failed cause we did not coach these players up correctly and play them enough before we released Whit to find out if they could do the job at hand. The fact remains we needed to move on from Whit in any case just should of had our house in order first. Hopefully the new o line coach can help us out and coach some of our guys up and make a solid line for us this coming year. Between a few of our decent back up players like Redmond Westerman and Hopkins, free agency {big if here} and the draft we should be able to fix our o line issues in one offseason other teams can do it we should be able to as well.
