So do you feel the Leonhard loss isn't a big one? I don't see anyone raving about his majesty, but I was curious about your perspective.
I wasn't too concerned with losing Rex/Pettine as their style was detrimental late in games, and we had replaced Marvin Lewis/Mike Nolan/Mike Singletary/Jack Del Rio/Mike Smith before, but I knew that we would probably surrender
slightly more points/yards in 2009 than 2008.
I wasn't too concerned with losing Scott as we have replaced a ton of "star" LBs before, including your own Adalius Thomas, but I knew that for the first year, there would be a significant dropoff in our pass-protection as Bart was great in coverage.
Conversely, I was actually fairly
happy about losing Leonhard as he is tiny, can't tackle, and had one interception in the regular season last year in trash time against the Bengals' third-string quarterback.
Leonhard got a ton of press because he got an interception handed to him in our first playoff game, and then knocked himself out by forcing a fumble in the second.
Dawan Landry, who was knocked out of last season in week three or four, is better than Leonhard in every facet of the game, and I'm not sure Leonhard would have even been second-string on the Ravens with two pretty good backups behind him in Nakamura and Zbikowski.
Leonhard is a really, really, really useful gadget-type player, but as a starting safety, he is a liability.