I don’t feel like BB did a good job drafting wise or FA in regards to bringing in good solid OL.
A myriad of reasons for this. The complete confidence in Dante meant for decades, really, he ran the show. His first retirement brought in someone not up to the challenge.
Dante’s second—and final—retirement had a promising young duo: Popovich and Bricillo. It was my understanding they worked well together, though Popovich was the more senior in knowledge.
When the coronavirus caused lockdown and fear, Popovich made the unusual decision not to receive the experimental jab, which is not a vaccine. That only highlights his strength of character, conviction, intelligence, and prudence.
Not good for his professional career, though, which had only recently begun to solidify. He was forced out.
Bricillo ran the show and, after a bit of a rough initial go, performed admirably. He went to Oakland, er, Los Vegas with the former OC.
That’s when Belichick’s inattention to the OL became apparent.
Karras was gone as a FA pickup by the Bengals. He was versatile as a high level center/guard backup and good starter at both. We should have brought someone in. As Captain Stone first pointed out, relying on Thanksdad, which Belichick unquestionably did, turned out to be an error.
My choice was the guy they brought in for a visit, Ryan Bates from the Bills. But we did not even offer. Chicago did, but the Bills matched.
That season we witnessed James Ferentz being put on skates by the Jets Quinnen Williams.
Then, even a more grievous mistake, was the apparently not well thought out decision to give Patricia the duties of OL coach even after he was named OC. He was backed up by a former marginal player with next to no coaching experience who was on the team solely for the minority fellowship positions each franchise must set aside.
So last year was a disaster. It started with the desire to try to fit a square peg in a round hole by installing a wide zone approach that necessarily puts a premium on smaller, more athletic guys. Ahem, Trent Brown and Mike Onwenu, anyone? Those are power gap players par excellence.
Then the curious decision to swap tackles caused the lifelong LT Isaiah Wynn to lose interest and become disgruntled. If you don’t agree with me, realize he was a vetted Dante player.
I am interested to see his progress now that he is with the Dolphins. He could very well be their LT if Armistead goes down as he has every year.
I could make other complaints. The year they drafted Bust Harry, I was pushing for Dalton Risner, who had five position versatility. And this year they needed to draft a developmental LT, even if it was a late rounder Jake Witt instead of sixth-rounder Ameer Speed.
Or, better yet, not trade up with the Jets for Chad Ryland. We had 120 and 184, which we traded for 112. If we had stayed put perhaps we could have had both the Maryland kicker and a potential NFL starting LT in Carter Warren, who would have been someone our newly high paid OL coach, Adrian Klemm, could have worked with.
