02-02-2020, 06:46 PM
(02-02-2020, 06:06 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Andy Dalton had the 1st-3rd fastest release time in the NFL for most of his career.
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He also didn't have a terrible offensive line for the first half-decade of his career.
2011: Whitworth-Livings-Cook-Williams/Bolling-A Smith
2012: Whitworth-Boling-Faine/Robinson-Zeitler-A Smith
2013: Whitworth-Boling-Cook-Zeitler-A Smith
2014: Whitworth-Boling-Bodine-Zeitler-A Smith/Newhouse
2015: Whitworth-Boling-Bodine-Zeitler-A Smith
It was only once you started throwing in Ogbuehi/Fisher/Redmond/Hart/Miller/Price/Jerry that the OL became shaky. Right now we're looking at an OL of...
Williams/Miller/Hopkins/Jordan/Hart
...and I doubt that will change much seeing as how they just drafted Williams and Jordan, just signed Hopkins to a 3 year extension in Dec, and signed both Hart and Miller to 3 year deals last offseason. That is objectively a far worse OL than anything Dalton had when the Bengals were actually winning football games, and once again I don't think Burrow will have that 1st-3rd fastest release time that Dalton had working for him. Think more Ryan Finley being sacked 11 times in 3 games. That's 59 sacks in a 16 game season. Burrow has never had guys coming at him as fast as they will, and he's probably never played behind a worse OL than he will with the Bengals.
But again, how many times did Dalton sustain a serious injury behind these bad lines?
I'm obviously not advocating for Burrow to have a shitty line. But I think it's silly to look at Andrew Luck and think that's going to happen to Burrow. Luck just had... well, a lot of bad luck. He's a lot like Eifert in that regard. Just a series of freak injuries one after the other.
We're not fixing everything in one season, guys. That's just the reality of it. Grab your franchise QB now while you can, and continue adding linemen through the next few drafts.
Everything in this post is my fault.
