Too bad geneo grissom turned out to be an abomination of a pick..we could have really used a hit on a DE there.
Listen I thought we would be a better D because
- much better secondary with Gilmore instead of Ryan
- flowers, brown making a year three jump
- adding Harris to our LB corps
- adding Ealy as starting DE
Long was a role player
Sheard got benched last year
Nink was slowing down physically
I figured they would be replaced easily
Addressing point by point:
Gilmore is an upgrade over Ryan, but not a massive one. Ryan was universally regarded as one of the top corners on the market. I think he's a bit overrated, but he's a talented corner and I don't think anyone was operating from a place of reason if they thought Gilmore was a massive upgrade. He's a better and more versatile player who will take some time to integrate into the defense.
Re: Grissom - when the Pats picked Grissom and Flowers back to back, my take was that if one of them turned into a starter-caliber DE I'd be happy. That's the most you can reasonably hope for with mid-round picks, and that's exactly how it panned out. I don't mind the picks from that perspective. Same reason why I can't make myself hate the Tre Jackson pick. Between he and Mason, I was hoping we'd get one starting guard, and that's what we got.
Flowers already made the leap last year. He's a stud DE. Brown... well, my opinion on Brown is pretty well established at this point, not going to keep beating it into the ground. Suffice to say, I think anyone who's been watching at all closely should have been cautiously optimistic at best.
Harris is 33 and was generally considered to be a half-step slow 3 years ago. He's a nice situational piece, and there are gameplans in which he'll feature and be a real asset. Any time he's on the field, the run D will be a lot better than we saw last night. But he will not step foot on the field against the Travis Kelces and Kareem Hunts of the world. Anyone who thought he was some kind of transformative piece wasn't coming from a place of reason. There are a lot of teams that you won't be able to have both him and Hightower on the field against, and wherever that's the case he's going to be the guy riding the bench because Hightower's the much better player.
Ealy was cut 2 weeks ago. If you were projecting the defense to improve based on a guy who hasn't been on the team for weeks, then I dunno what to tell you.
It doesn't really matter how you feel about Long, Sheard, and Ninkovich, because regardless of spin it's a significant downgrade. It's simply a fact that they were three of the top four DEs last year. Whoever you think is our DE2 right now--Wise, Guy, Butler, whoever--he would be DE5 on the depth chart behind all three of them if they were here today.
