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How stupid are O genius HCs


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This is so incredibly frustrating for me that I have to vent.

 

I watched the Broncos under Shanahan ignore the D line for a decade, drafting poor players and dredging up has-beens or never-wasses in FA to play the position, and then watching the whole D go to hell because of it. If Shanahan ever did stumble on a decent D lineman, he either wouldn't pay the guy (Hayward & Berry) or pissed them off (Pryce) so they'd go packing.

 

Now we have O genius McDaniels stepping in, and we're seeing the exact same mentality. McDaniels plans on playing a 3-4 D, but has all sorts of questions and very few answers on the roster for D linemen who have the ability to play in the 3 man line.

 

There are literally zero players on the roster who can play a 3 man line NT. The NT has to be an anchor who takes up 2 blockers in the middle - strong as hell & willing to be abused constantly. Usually that means a guy who goes 320+ lbs, can bench 225 at least 22 times, and is dowright nasty with a good motor. There isn't a single player on the DEN roster right now who fits that description, or even remotely comes close.

 

McDaniels currently has 3 potential candidates for DE. 3 man line DEs have to be an unusual combination of tall, realitively heavy to credibly take on double teams, athletic to generate some kind of push upfield on pass plays, and strong. DEN has 3 possible guys who fit that description - Kenny Peterson, Marcus Thomas, and FA addition Darrell Reid. All three guys played DT in their careers, though, so there is no way of knowing if they are agile enough to play on the edge of the line and get enough movement laterally to contain & string out plays. Peterson looks like he has that ability, but the other 2 are serious question marks. Tim Crowder becomes a possibility if he can gain about 15 lbs and get some kind of intensity in his game.

 

All the other D linemen are way too light/small to play on a 3 man D line. That means guys like Ebenezar Ekuban, Elvis Dumerville, and Jarvis Moss are going to have to learn to play LB, but no one has any idea if these guys are agile enough to play in space and get into pass drops, or if they can read & scrape on run plays. None of these guys has played LB before, and the demands on the OLB in a 3-4 could very well be way beyond any of their capabilities.

 

So for all the player on the entire DEN roster right now, there is exactly one guy - Peterson - who fits into a 3-4 D line and a bunch of guys who no one knows whether they can play the D or not and may just be eating up roster space & salary cap. That's the way DEN is currently going into the draft & OTAs - with at least 5 positions to fill with 2 NTs and 3 DEs.

 

Why is it that these O geniuses can not see the value of even a solid, much less a good or even great, D line? Great D lines cover up for a lot of short comings behind them. You don't have to have super cover CBs or awesome LBs if the D line puts on great rush pressure on pass plays and uses up all the O linemen on run plays. There are a lot of CBs who can cover at the NFL level for 3 to 3.5 seconds, but very, very few who can cover for 5 to 6 seconds. Yet these O geniuses simply ignore the D line, treating it as though they are pariahs and then wondering why their Ds suck so badly and can't stop anyone when the game is on the line.

 

In any case, it looks like we have yet another O minded HC in DEN who has absolutely no clue on how to put together a decent D, meaning that the O may put lots of points on the board but the team will remain mediocre because they can't stop anyone. This is really maddening as hell.

 

:wacko:

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I see that DEN added Ronald Fields from SF, who fits the physical description of a 3-4 NT. But Fields was already playing a third string NT in a 3-4 D in SF so I don't know how much he brings to the table as far as ability. Reid is the only other FA addition on the D line, but again, he was playing DT in a 4-3 system and would have to play DE in a 3-4 D. He doesn't have near enough sand in his pants to play a NT in a 3-4.

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isn't Reid primarily a special teams god? I figured he'd be in the rotation at DT, but certainly not the starter.

 

 

If we moved up to get Raji, would we likely put the 2nd round pick in the trade offer?

 

Doubt you'd get both. Just saying that one or the other are possibilities for a 3-4 NT available in the draft.

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