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From the UAB, Had a great combine in 2002 and was selected #22 overall, played as a DE until Mangini converted him to a 3/4 OLB.
He became a starter early on and Performed reasonably well to good over his career, A good portion of the Jets fan base felt he never lived up to his draft position.
He was steady and avoided serious injury problems till yesterday, kept his nose clean off the field, not much of a voice in the locker room.
Big loss for the Jets.
Thomas was thought to be a good 34 OLB pass rush stud coming out of college when there weren't many teams looking for them. I would have drafted the hype, but he turned out to be a totally different player. He was teetering on bust level before the 34 came in, and he turned out to be a solid all around player who wasn't much of a pass rusher.
I give players a TON of credit who adapt like that to become productive. Reminded me a lot of Colvin after his first injury when he became a very good all around player and strong run defender to compensate for the lost pass rush step.
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Really? Dude's been in the league for a decade! He was a 1st round pick!
Under-rated tackler, solid player. Longtime target on JI because he never turned into a star pass rusher. Eh, he probably would have gotten dumped on here too.
But a big loss. Not Mayo big, but the Jets have no depth so bigger than it should be.
Exactly. A bunch of fans over on their boards are calling on Maybin to step up and replace Thomas, or are calling for TBC to be signed and/or Aaron Curry traded for. These people clearly have no clue what Thomas actually does in that defense. Put any of those guys in his place and they'd get swallowed up at the point of attack, down after down, while the opposing offense runs directly at him.
The first issue, as you pointed out, is the lack of depth. Westerman isn't any good. The second issue is that he has a pretty rare role. You can't just go grab some linebacker from somewhere else in the league that doesn't have a bunch of experience with setting the edge. There aren't a lot of guys with his physical characteristics and learned skills. Ironically, if they really wanted to trade for a guy to replace him, Jermaine Cunningham would be an excellent candidate. The Pats would probably never make that trade, but that's the sort of player that the Jets should be looking for. (technically, it's the type of player who they should have been looking for this past offseason, but the Jets don't believe in having backups). If they were desperate enough to give up a high pick, and the Pats aren't sold on Cunningham being part of their defensive plans going forward, that could get interesting, but it would take a king's ransom to trade in-season to the Jets at an exploitable position on their defense.
Realistically, they'll probably just go with Westerman and deal with the consequences.
So the Jets losing Thomas would be equivalent of the Pats losing Mayo?
Nah, The Jets losing Harris would be closer in comparison, and even then Mayo is better. Our OLBs aren't very good, so we don't really have a comparison for Thomas.
Nah, The Jets losing Harris would be closer in comparison, and even then Mayo is better. Our OLBs aren't very good, so we don't really have a comparison for Thomas.
So basically this just makes us about even at OLB now.
Yeah, I'm still stuck thinking of Mayo, Spikes, an Fletcher all as ILBs. With Fletcher as an OLB, we probably are about even now that Thomas is gone- Pace is better than any of our guys, but theirs after that are probably even worse than ours.
11Likes
Re: OT: Jets lose Bryan Thomas for season
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