TheComeback
2nd Team Getting Their First Start
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- Jan 10, 2008
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So you're saying one of the youngest, most inexperienced teams in the league finished with an NFL-best 14-2 record and won their division without any motivation for doing so.Its was suggested in another thread that BB's trading for future picks was always advantageous but I suggest it isnt. What trading for future picks does is get both more AND younger players on an already-overhauled 14-2 team. Follow my logic...
I am not related nor the biggest fan of Matt Light. Our LT has been here quite a while and has been the benefit of our style of offense and has made a few Pro Bowls because of it. He has been a good fit, low key, understated guy who hasnt been out to break any banks lately. Now he is a unrestricted FA watching the draft on TV to see us draft Solder to basically replace him. Light is one of just a few players that were here in the Super Bowl years. IMHO part of "team building" is mixing youth with experience and rewarding the vets like Light even if they are slightly past their prime. This week he will be listed between 60-70 of the best players in the whole friggin league as judged by his peers(top 5%). There are a few positions that continuity and loyalty should be rewarded and LT is one of them especially if he can still play!
Now there are alot of people who can argue that losing Light means we get younger, stronger, cheaper etc...what we cant see nor measure is how losing a leader in the locker room and a model citizen-Patriot is influencing the mass of youth on this team. Losing Light sends a clear message to any potential FAs that loyalty isnt rewarded. Keeping Light sends our highest draft pick in a few years to the bench as our #3 T and blocking TE!! Thats not going to happen.
Now the reason Solder will define BB is simply because we didnt win SBs with BB draft picks. Our SB teams were the grizzled old vets who were old and slow, a bunch of ragtag players off the scrap heap etc. BB can coach them! With the remake of this team we are now one of the youngest teams in the league and BB hasnt demonstrated the same success with his draft picks. Having and paying Seymour(yes, a BB pick) would have won us more games, likely playoff games, in the last 2 years. Period. Would it have cost us a few players at the end of the roster....YES. Solder wouldnt be here. But those players at the end of our roster now are guys like Wilhite, Brace, Ornberger who in years past would have been replaced by a JAG like Otis Smith/Anthony Pleasant/Hochstein. Those type of JAGs have something in common that BB drafted/coached players dont......MOTIVATION. There is simply no motivation from the youth on this team!! There is something to be said for the heiarchy system paying stars and sprinkling in JAGs, it keeps the "middle class" hungry. I suggest so many 2nd-3rd round picks only expands the "middle class" and wont be fully rewarding those that do make it to stardom.... which is particularly difficult to define on a BB team. The guys in the locker room will see this first. At what point in this evolution does BB lose his locker room because of it?
I've said this before, but this time I really mean it. That's the dumbest thing I've ever read on this forum since I started reading it four years ago. This team had amazing chemistry last year, the kind of chemistry that most teams never have. They might not have won the Super Bowl, but neither did plenty of other highly-motivated, MORE experienced teams- like the Steelers or the Jets.
While you're in the business of defining BB's legacy, would like to make any predictions about the upcoming season? Maybe 6-10, 8-8? The world is awaiting your wise words, Mr. Camping.