My thing all along was that even if you bought into Campbell as a prospect, whatever level you saw him eventually reaching I felt you'd have to dial it back for expectations as a rookie. How many guys are at their career peak as rookies? I felt there were enough good traits and intangibles that he could stick at LT and give you enough to get by. But I never thought he'd be a true additive piece for you there and that if he was ever going to be a high end player it'd be inside. So discounting that back, I was still expecting below average LT play this year, but still improvement over last year. Not only is he outplaying my career expectations, he's doing it from day 1. Going from my expectation of below average LT play to really high level is an absolutely massive swing.
It's still just 5 games. The concern with him was always going to be counters to attack how he compensates for his lack of length and that's the type of thing that teams will go to more with more film. For as much as we obsessed all offseason about his arm length, defensive coordinators didn't spend all offseason panicking about how they were going to stop this offense. It might sound obvious, but as this team establishes itself more seriously there are still wrinkles coordinators will scout out and throw at us. Also, Moses might be solid but he also isn't exactly Lane Johnson over there at RT and Maye is so excellent at rolling to his right that teams are definitely incentivized to bring their pressures off the right side vs. Campbell and if they do attack the left side there's a rookie LG with less pedigree and a C who isn't traditionally great in pass pro backing him on the other side of him. Not to discredit Campbell, but I do think there's an element of him just not being the guy to exploit or target on this OL even if he plays the traditionally toughest position. But the fact you can even say that is reflective of a very good level of play so far.
Not to highjack this thread which is for Campbell, but that's happened in a few other very important areas too. Diggs, at his age and recovery timeline, I expected to be a very weak #1 WR but his recovery timeline has been way more accelerated than I think anyone could realistically expect. Landry had a lot of troubling sings in TEN last year as a paper tiger with the sack total who wasn't actually good, but I'd say he's turned the clock back. Chaisson not only has matched last year's play, but seems to have continued to improve further as a player. And then Maye... I think most of us viewed him as a QB worth building around but growth's not always linear so it was tough to forecast exactly how he'd look this year. I'd say he's pretty far exceeding my expectations with regards to avoiding bad/losing players. Last year I saw someone who can make amazing plays but also prone to bad ones and bad plays at the QB position to more to hurt you than great plays do to help you in most cases because you still get another down if you don't turn the ball over or effectively kill a drive with negative yardage.
QB/#1 WR/LT/EDGE are the 4 most important positions in football by most measures and on paper I thought we were below average in all of them due to a combo of young guys still developing or age/injury related decline/recovery timeline. But so far this season I'd say it's swing to at least average or better at all 4 spots and it goes without saying how big of a swing that is. I'd have to do a thorough assessment to really rank but if you just did a quick power rankings I'd have had them 25th-32nd tier to start the year and now anecdotally it feels like probably 15th-20th. I still thought they could push for playoffs because the schedule is so bad but from what I'm seeing now they absolutely SHOULD push for the playoffs.
