TBC was benched in a playoff game and we started a scrub special teamer at ILB so we could move Vrabel to his position because Tomlinson was leaving cleat markson his face.
TBC is too short for the position, as is Nincovich. Yet they are ideal for OLB, while Burgess, who is exactly as tall, can't possibly ever play OLB, even though that is our base defense.
If you want to say all these unproven OLBs are naturals, while the identical size player with more experience has some deformity preventing him from ever playing in our base defense, that's fine.
By the way, who was our previous 260 DE before Burgess, since we seem to have a position for a defensive end who cannot possibly ever play in our base defense, which requires 300 lb DE types.
Again, you are inserting your opinion as fact. TBC didn't play in that game because we wanted a better coverage LB on the field, so we put Alexander in to cover, and moved Vrabel to OLB. IT was
I don't know why you are limiting your argument to height and weight. There is a lot more that goes into a players ability to play a position than what their height and weight are.
We have not have a 260lb DE before nor have we had a guy at LB with no LB skills.
Burgess is a unique player on our roster. He is a specialist who can rush the passer from the sub packages. That is half of the job of guys who are on our team as OLBs. He is not capable of doing the other half of the job, not by a longshot.
If you must identify a position for him in the 34, its OLB.
It IS possible to play him there, but it creates issues.
First, it would force us to make him the 4th rusher on every play he is in. He can't be in coverage. Ideally, we like to split the job of 4th rusher equally between both OLBs in the base....one will rush on every down if its a pass. But we prefer to use both interchangeably.
Secondly, Burgess is horrendous at playing run duties as a 34 OLB. I recognize BB made positive comments about his run D, but that was as a nickel DE, which is night and day different from 34 OLB.
Your argument seems to be he has the height and weight of an OLB, and since he can't play any other position in the 34 that makes him our starting OLB. The fact is he can't really play that position either. If forced to put him out there, thats his best spot. That doesn't mean he is good enough at it to be out there.
An example would be teams that use huge blocking FBs who can do nothing else. Thats 50% of the snaps in the I that they play, but when you go to 1 back, spread, your argument would tell me the guy is a TE or RB or something, because his spot (for Burgess thats DE in a 4 man front) doesn't exist.
If what you are saying is that if we were down to 11 defensive players and had to pick a place in the 34 for Burgess, its OLB, I agree. If what you are saying is that Burgess is anywhere but the last man on the depth chart to play there in a real game (but for unique situations where he is basically a standing DE in a specialized scheme and call) you are ignoring that in addition to having the proper height and weight you need the skillset for the position.
