Grantland piece on Hightower, Chandler Jones and Collins

A nice look at how their combination of versatility and affordability is huge for our defense. The post is also packed with gifs of Collins wrecking plays.

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/n...chandler-jones-donta-hightower-jamie-collins/

VrabelJr said:

The
post is also packed with gifs of Collins wrecking plays.

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A good article exactly what I auve come to expect from grantland, really shows the value of Jones.

Hitting on draft picks early has been the biggest thing for us recently bills first pick in the draft has worked out very well for the last five or so years, even Chung and Merriweather have had big seasons for us. Gives me a lot of faith in Easley

Jones, Hightower and Collins stay fairly low cost for 2015, but then 5th year options kick in on Jones and Hightower. By 2017 it will be very pricey to keep all 3. That's one of the bigger long term challenges for keeping the defense together, and a reason why it's important to pipeline low cost talent. The large cap hits for Wilfork and possibly Mayo will likely be off the books by that time.

I have re-watched the game several times since Saturday and noticed what many people here have already stated.
The amount of times that Chandler Jones gets held on plays without it being called is astounding. Defenders wrap their arms around his head to stop him. It's insane.

Anteros said:

I have re-watched the game several times since Saturday and noticed what many people here have already stated.
The amount of times that Chandler Jones gets held on plays without it being called is astounding. Defenders wrap their arms around his head to stop him. It's insane.

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He might need to change his technique a bit, get his head down more and make it harder to get hooked around the neck.

It happens to him every week so it's a change to his game that needs to be made.

Good article, but it misrepresents Collins' college career by carefully looking at only his senior OLB year. Over the course of four years Southern Miss moved him all over the defense, including a full season at DB. He finished college with 3 INT and 18 PD, and his coverage skills were part of what made him such an intriguing draft prospect.

So this is offbase, IMO:

The biggest transition from the player Collins was in college to the one he is now is the coverage load the Patriots heap on him. There were times at Southern Miss when he was asked to drop into coverage, but even those plays saw him taking mostly short drops into the flat

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Big-T said:

He might need to change his technique a bit, get his head down more and make it harder to get hooked around the neck.

It happens to him every week so it's a change to his game that needs to be made.

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Agree that Jones needs to adapt a bit, but I see a lot of coaches ***** to the refs all the time about these things to have them watched and suddenly they start getting called, are our coaches not giving the refs an earful about it?

Jones should be drawing substantially more holding calls, he's in a blatant choke hold far too often and I'm not sure he's drawn a single hold all season.

Big-T said:

He might need to change his technique a bit, get his head down more and make it harder to get hooked around the neck.

It happens to him every week so it's a change to his game that needs to be made.

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Hell, even if he changed his technique so it was more obvious to the refs what was happening. I'm not encouraging him to "flop", of course. I think anyone who would be on this forum is probably more inclined to see those types of plays with our guys as opposed to opponents/other teams, but I'm surprised that something like that wouldn't be addressed at the coaching level. Maybe his injury status has precluded seeing the benefits of such a change (if it has been made) as of yet.

Because you're right, if you're not getting there as much as you want and you're not getting the flags, time to make some adjustments. No sense getting held on every rush move if you're not getting pressures, sacks, hits, or flags.

yup they're pretty awesome (check sig and avatar)

Don't usually think of chandler as an lb, but these three are quite the trio