theinstrumental

18 hours ago, mrcompletely11 said:

I wish I knew the answer, he is so damn strong, aggressive and physical there has to be a way for him to work.   But thinking he is athletic enough to play zone is perplexing. 

Ekwonu ran a sub-5.0 40. 97th percentile for all offensive tackles. His athleticism is his best trait. He’ll be fine in any run-blocking scheme ever devised. It’s the other kind of blocking that gives him trouble.

2 minutes ago, frankw said:

Do what other successful teams are doing. Keep drafting OL instead of treating it like an afterthought or thinking you can sign bums off the street to hold down starting gigs.

They have not done that at all. Ekwonu, Moton, and BC were 1st, 2nd, and 3rd round picks, respectively. Corbett was a premium FA. Bozeman's the only relatively low-cost signing of the starting five, and we've grabbed Mays and Zavala in back-to-back day 3's.

Moton is our best offensive player and should stay where he is.

We know the best five is Ekwonu - Christensen - Bozeman - Corbett - Moton. We've seen it be good when it wasn't complicated by injury. If you want to make an improvement, it's probably only done by drafting for immediate depth/competition and sliding those guys around as needed. You can do that at LT, kicking Ekwonu inside, or G, and in either case allowing BC to be a jack-of-all-trades reserve. Another option is to draft a C who can immediately play G, moving BC to the bench and eventually promoting him again when it's time for the C to replace Bozeman.

Point is, the line is not as good as we thought it was going into last year, but it's not as bad as it looked, either. As always, smart investments to the depth of the line are useful. There will be injuries, and we must be prepared, but OL isn't the only place on the roster that needs help.

Yeah but at least we know who our starting guard will be for the next 10 seasons.

47 minutes ago, Buckets said:

Ickey having a high PFF score and Jamison having a low one don't seem to pass the eye test 

The grading system doesn't scale based on how important a play is. Icky's missed block on the 4th-down sack was just one missed block. Jamison's crushing Jefferson was just one tackle. If every other play slightly contradicts those two, we probably never notice and their grade comes out looking nuts. 

We got behind the sticks a lot this game, too. False starts are common in Seattle, but it's been bad all year. It's hard to come out and run on 1st and 15. 

People really start and stop at the weight column when they think about interior linemen. 

He’s very good. He doesn’t affect the QB enough to get to “elite,” but he’s as good of a run defender as you’re going to find.

4 hours ago, Mr. Scot said:

Yeah, that doesn't actually make any sense.

Until we see actual results, all of it is speculation.

I don't really put a whole lot of value on speculation.

We're so close to being on the same page. We don't know how these guys are going to turn out. So you can't evaluate the players. But we do, generally, know how valuable each pick is. And we can evaluate whether you create or destroy draft pick value in a given deal. The results are unknown, but you can evaluate the process. We destroyed value here. Bad process.

Just a good football player. Love it.

Hell yeah, we finally have good starters AND the depth that we need!

21 minutes ago, Swaggasaurus said:

I think we can all agree Reach. I think we can all agree expensive. But this isn’t a sky is falling. We weren’t getting Greg Olsen at pick 132. It wasn’t reckless and this isn’t Edmund Kugbila

"These picks don't matter anyway" is how you slowly, invisibly lower you chances of winning until you take yourself out of contention completely. We're short a third from the Corral trade and a fourth from the DJ Johnson trade, when according to the front office, a third and a fourth is the price for a guy who's so good that you just have to jump up and take him. A guy like DJ Johnson or Matt Corral!

21 minutes ago, Mr. Scot said:

Paper is flimsy.

So are early draft grades.

Talk to me about how it looks on the field.

(we should have a better idea about that in 2-3 years)

There's no need to insist on ignorance in this situation. On the field it's going to look like we don't have a fourth-round pick that we would've had if we hadn't decided that we had to move up to get this guy. Plenty of publicly-available estimates exist that can tell you the value of a fourth round pick. We know what we lost immediately.

The only thing we don't know is whether this dude would've been there when we picked next. As it stands now, there remain several free agent EDGE guys, and an unknown number of dudes will get cut as camp progresses, and an even greater unknown could be available for trade for, say, a third- and fourth-round pick. We also know who was still on the board at our actual pick, and "big edge who tested well" describes Dylan Horton, Ade Adebawore, Isaiah McGuire...

It also reeks of the Seahawks' normal process from the past several years, which was to "get their guy" no matter what anybody else thought of them. It didn't work well for them, and they finally fixed it, but it looks like we're not going to do the same.

 https://twitter.com/benbbaldwin/status/1651930498350960640

This is the downside of the Seattle draft strategy. Taking "their guy" whenever they feel like they need to, regardless of value or cost. We burned a ton of draft capital last year doing this to grab Corral. And now we're doing it again for a random edge.

This thread is wild; there’s no reason for people to hate Burns like this. Charles Johnson didn’t start getting sacks until his fourth season. Addison took five years to become a player. Rucker had three, maybe four good years as a pass rusher. Burns has already basically matched the peak three-year stretches of every other edge in franchise history (Pep excluded), and hasn’t even gotten to his second contract yet. He’s number two. It’s not close.

EDIT: Kevin Greene’s three years were better. Burns should pass him in a couple of years, but right now Greene’s got a better case than I realized.

4 minutes ago, SmittysLawnGuy said:

I think Turner and Downs are legit. I get the upside on Washington but man, reminds me of another potential TE on our squad. Thought Tremble was a bad pick, one more year to prove me wrong. 

I think they’re pretty different prospects Tremble has pretty normal tight end traits. Washington’s physical advantages are going to give him a reason to be on the field from day one. He just has a much higher floor than most tight end at draft time.

Better options at 39: DJ Turner, Keanu Benton, Darnell Washington, Cam Smith, Josh Downs.
 

We’ve got a great offensive line coach and just brought back every starter. We can add depth on the line later in the draft. 

46 minutes ago, KillerKat said:

How many years do the Saints have to manipulate the cap before people realize the cap is no issue when you know how to move around money. Huddlers have been saying for over a decade they will feel the ramifications of it, but they never do.

How many times do they have to let premium players walk before people stop making this argument? Terron Armstead, franchise left tackle, unable to be retained because of that strategy. There have been plenty of others. Nothing’s free.

No JAG linebackers, please. There are bigger immediate needs at safety, slot corner, and pass-catcher. And if we're making depth moves, better to do it at basically any other defensive position or on the offensive line. 

34 minutes ago, TheSpecialJuan said:

 

lol they just hit 'undo' on the Amari Cooper trade. That worked out well for the Browns, so Dallas is smart to make basically the same move. Would've been nice to have been in on this move.

Foreman's a very good runner. But Sanders' rookie-year reception count is more than double Foreman's career total. Foreman limits the offense; Sanders opens it up. That's the difference in value. 

A lot is being made of Foreman's RYOE, which was sixth the league. Guess who was right behind him at seventh? Chuba Hubbard! We still have a very good runner in the backfield, but now we have someone who can catch passes, too.

Yes, and I hope it happens soon. We know he’s a backup now. And if we pay him like a backup, he’s a pretty good value. Athletic, positionally flexible, good vibes. Keep him around.

On 3/7/2023 at 2:04 PM, Verge said:

I am still doing reports on some of these guys but 

Off ball LB: 
1. Drew Sanders 
2. Trenton Simpson 
3. Daiyan Henley 
4. Henry To'o To'o
5. Noah Sewell 

Did you see anything with Jack Campbell that made you drop him below all of these guys? Also, if Evero wants to blitz a lot then it seems like we'll need some guys with pass-rush juice. I see it with Sanders; have you seen it with anyone else? I've heard Nick Herbig might be an edge-to-linebacker conversion but don't know who else might fit.

I would really like to not overpay Bozeman. The hidden key to our run game last year was offensive line health. We only lost Elf through the first 16 games. It’s already guaranteed that we’ll be less healthy next year, so there’s a good chance that we’re about to pay more money to our O-line just to watch it regress anyway. I just hope they don’t get swept up in thinking that continuing to throw all of our assets at one spot is going to be the answer. 

I know QB coach -> OC is the norm, but I'd really like a candidate to have a background with the O-line or as a running game coordinator. We'll probably need to coach up some young QB's for a while here, but we've got an elite run game right now and need to keep it that way. The next OC needs to be able to keep the running game as varied and effective as it is now.