Quote:
Originally Posted by Oldcolt
Every year there is a new genius. This year (so far) it is the Rams. If (a big if I know) Paye and Odeyingbo turn it on next year the genius may be Ballard. Easy to call once the games are played. Lots of teams go 'all in' and have zilch to show for it. It is a crap shoot.
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1st year DE's that have a marked impact, are few and far between (Parsons is a rare find). Odibyu couldn't even play for at least half the year. I like Paye, but I don't ever foresee him being a Freeney / Mathis type, looks like he could be a Seymor type- which would be a fantastic long term player but not a pure speed rush threat that is going to cause panic in the backfield.
Mid season, obviously Odey can't play and Paye is having "marginal" success at best off the edge. Our pass rush is anemic and QB's are routinely completing 65%+ on us. Miller becomes available, clearly looking to play for a team that could compete right now, we are in the middle of a playoff surge.
We sit on our hands again, went with the mentality that we can play for the future vs the present at a critical position.
At WR it's even worse. We didn't really even address the position in the draft. So as far as we can tell, Ballard was comfortable that Pittman, PC and TY would carry the water with some other guys like Dulin and Pascal filling in space around them. We appear to have bought into to Stracham or even Patmon being a possible solution as an emerging player that could contribute later in the year. So PC and TY are hurt, okay so then I guess we would lean into the Stracham and Patmon strategy that must have been our plan? Nope for whatever reason found Stracham incapable early in the season and said he couldn't play at all and we seemed to use Patmon once every 5th birthday.
Mid season our passing game is lethargic, we'd already lost PC much earlier than the Rams lost Woods, and we basically throw to one guy. OBJ becomes available, we again seem to be "fine" with what we have and do NOTHING to try to fix what is clearly a problem. Wentz sucks but might he have been better with WR's that were capable of helping him with separation- which clearly OBJ has demonstrated he can do with the Rams?
Sorry, Race, not trying to be a "told you so" type guy, just pointing out that other teams seem to be willing to TRY to get to the promised land whereas Ballard seems to really like talking about it.