Kontradiction
On my retirement tour.
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Of course they did, and that illustrates just how little confidence they had in the DL, and therefor the front 7.
Actually, that should illustrate just how much a NT can do for a 3-4 defense. With the addition of Washington, we had the best D-Line in the league, and a mean LB corps. All it took was one addition to become the best, and NT was that addition. After his addition, it was pretty obvious that the coaching staff was impressed with the front seven and the defense as a whole.
I'm not disputing how good the defense was or how bad this defense looks. I'm just saying that no one, not even the coaches, expected them to be the best defense in the league. The view that Milloy was let go because the team didn't need him is pure revisionist history. They wanted him bad enough to pay him $3mm that year in a much lower cap environment. He just had feelers out in the league and realized a lot more money could be had elsewhere. BB was despondant they day they let him go.
Of course BB wasn't happy they let him go. Aside from being a good safety, he and BB were friends at the time. However, the two circumstances are completely different. I'm not actually even sure how you could possibly argue otherwise and not feel foolish for doing so. Milloy was let go because the defense wasn't going to run through him, even in part. That's different than being let go because they didn't need him. We already had the best front seven in all of football and our secondary was stout even with the hole at safety (which was admirably filled).
This particular instance? Not so much. Tate isn't going to command that kind of attention from a defense. Our running game and run blocking are suspect, especially against good defenses. Our TE's are extremely young and one has been left back to block far more often than he's been allowed to run routes. Why should that change how? Our (now) number one option, Welker, the beast over the middle, will now draw a team's #1 corner with safety help. On top of that, he'll also be even more of a target for hit-hungry safeties. ON TOP of all of this, we needed the offense to be as good as possible because the defense was experiencing growing pains. They will still continue experiencing growing pains. And we respond to ALL of this by letting go of our second greatest weapon on offense? It's a bad trade.