kungfoodude

I mean, those guys can't come out and say poo like, "Well, we've really miscalculated and we probably should have done more in the offseason" or "Yeah, I just don't trust these guys to block for me but I'm mostly used to that in my NFL career."

But our veteran lineman are so.....ugh....

Yeah, the UDFA craze is as predictable as it gets in a Huddle offseason.

This is true. Same with Brown and Christensen too.

Well, we really should have addressed it in 2020 AND 2021. Had we done that, I think we are having a totally different discussion.

In this case, it was kind of the team that was hyping him.

If their confidence is based on Scott, we are in trouble. Scott did a decent job for being an unknown entity to most of us but he was not by an stretch a good offensive lineman. It is what it is. Not much we can do about it now is watch and hope.

That's really a separate discussion about that statistic specifically. Regardless, that is basically my expectation for the year, a slight jump in the overall defense from 2020, but a clear trend upward over time.

Well, not all rookie linemen seem to be struggling with that. Let's hope he flashes in the preseason or the rest of camp.

I can't really buy into that "normal/fine" idea for a 3rd round draft pick when we so clearly had massive OL needs. For him to not even be close to challenging some pretty poor starters is a big disappointment.

I am not going to take any pleasure in the seemingly inevitable "I told you so's" for that OL group. That is honestly why I have been so massively down on the offseason we had. This was our opportunity to really improve that unit with another deep interior OL group and a deeper than normal OT group in the draft. Instead, we drafted a guy that they don't even seem to have a clear idea what to do with, a 6th rounder and a UDFA that has already been cut. And that isn't even mentioning those idiotic Erving and Elflein contracts. I was hesitant to call our OL offseason what I actually though but I am pretty close to it......a fuging disaster. I am just not going to be able to wrap my head around why you would take a bad offensive line from last year, arguably make it worse this season and then bring in a QB that was a huge bust, in no little part due to poor protection. Maybe this is just some 7D chess that I just can't understand.

So, from what you have seen so far, is there anyone on the roster that seems to be threatening to Miller, Erving and Elflein's starting spots? I guess they are hyping Daley as a key 6th man, so that seems to say a lot to me. That indicates there is some significant separation.

Frankly, not much we have heard or seen seems to indicate Christensen is near a starting spot. He seems to be another in a sizeable group fighting for a meaningful spot on the two deep. I really hope Erving and Elflein pan out. If not, I think the staff and FO should be getting some really hard questions from the press next offseason.

If he got booted before some of the guys on that list, it must have been pretty bad. He went before the obvious camp bodies. That's pretty rough.

In fairness, that is probably as close to a win against Donald as you will get.

This was a little bit of a different case because we have such a terrible situation on the OL and this was one of their supposed "key additions" to help possibly shore that up, despite being a UDFA. It is disappointing mainly because now we largely look like we will be starting mostly the same unit as last year, save for two lower end journeyman starters/higher quality journeyman backup offensive linemen that we seem to be starting. The depth guys don't exactly inspire thoughts of one of them winning a battle to start over Miller, Erving and Elflein. Certainly another hit to the hopes of the contingent of Daley/Brown/Moore/Christensen supporters that thought they would upgrade our OL. Seems like every day those guys just seem to solidify why they aren't the guy. I had lower hopes for that group of rookies and young guys than most but even I am pretty disappointed in the early showing.

Overall, better. Probably not leaps and bounds better but better. I think we should be in the 11-18 range defensively(Total Defense, Points Scored). Even if maybe our numbers are fairly close to last season, I don't think we will see the issues on third down be nearly as bad and I hope we overall improve our run defense numbers slightly, as well. It isn't as if I think we have a bad defense, I just think it's extremely young and needs a little experience before we are one of those consistent top 10 defenses.

I am not sure Perryman is much of a gain yet because, much like his rep was coming in, he hasn't been able to see the field yet. The potential for the LB's to be better is there, but so is the potential for it to be not much better at all. Horn I am expecting to be better at the schemes we want to run but he is going to be a rookie CB in the NFL. I expect ups and downs and I am not going to be even the slightest bit mad or upset at him if he has a little bit of a dicey rookie season. That wouldn't be even remotely out of the ordinary. So, I don't want to assume he is going to be a world beater.

I feel like this is what Chuck Norris says about a lot of life.

OL "excuses?" You mean you are sold on that unit??

All jokes aside, the starter quality is as bad or just slightly worse than last season but there might not be a huge drop off to our #2 OL unit this year. We definitely had an atrocious offseason attempting to improve that unit but we really did shore up our depth. But, just simply removing Little from the rotation automatically improves it pretty dramatically.

I think the top 10 stuff defense stuff is a little ridiculous. This is probably one of the least experienced defenses in the NFL and has a lot of obvious "yet to be determined" units(secondary and linebackers namely). We are chocked full of talent and potential on that side of the ball but pretty short on actual accomplishments. If I had to guess, we will be in the middle of the pack defensively with some stellar defensive showings scattered across the course of the season. I think we will be looking at being considered a top 10 unit in the next 2-3 seasons, when we keep improving the overall defense and our young pups start to get really polished. I don't really see a likely scenario where he is average and we win 10 games without one of the best defenses or offenses in the NFL. It's not impossible but I would consider it fairly unlikely. I'd say it's much more likely he either balls out and we win 10+ games or he is a fuging disaster and we win less than 6 games. Those seem like more likely scenarios to me.

Sure, but you also can't win with one of the worst QB's in the NFL and a bottom third OL, either. Ask the Chiefs how OL problems worked out last season. Ultimately, we need the bulk of the problems fixed to be where we want to be as a franchise. IMO, QB and LT were bigger needs. Obviously Rhule felt differently. We will see how it all ultimately works out. I just hope he turns out to be right.

You tryin' to kill this guy?????