The Defensive Front 7 - Lots of Work, Lots Of Options

[captain stone]

Funny you should ask. Guys like Roberts are drafted to be role players...

Perhaps I'm misreading, but you appear to be assuming that young players like Roberts have no potential to improve - that the deficiencies in his play this past year are inherent and permanent (due to "lack of talent") and that he has no means for fixing them or for developing positives that will offset any remaining deficiencies enough to make him a valuable role player for the Pats in his upcoming 3rd season.

The funny thing, unfortunately, is that Roberts sucks in his Role. I would've drafted Aaron Wallace in his place.

Another unfortunate matter is that he indeed has very little potential to improve, because unlike added bulk or playbook knowledge, Football IQ cannot be improved. One either has it, or one doesn't have it.

 

[maineman209]

The funny thing, unfortunately, is that Roberts sucks in his Role. I would've drafted Aaron Wallace in his place.

Another unfortunate matter is that he indeed has very little potential to improve, because unlike added bulk or playbook knowledge, Football IQ cannot be improved. One either has it, or one doesn't have it.

At this point, how do we even know what specific role the Pats had originally intended for Roberts? Was he playing that role this past season, or was he being used in a whole bunch of other roles/situations out of necessity?

Roberts played 271 snaps as a rookie in 2016 and looked (to my untrained and inexperienced eye) like a raw rookie doing it. He played 558 snaps in just his second season, and appeared to be taking on assignments that frequently seemed to be beyond his current capabilities to complete successfully.

Since I'm not a professional football coach, and since I certainly haven't worked with Roberts on learning his craft nearly every day for two years, I'm completely unqualified to judge whether or not he has "talent", or the potential to improve in a specific role (which seems fairly undefined at this point), or to even know what "Football IQ" might be.

In my limited experience, however, I've seen players improve in their third seasons, sometimes defying the expectations of folks with far greater expertise and perception than I claim to possess. Thus, I really don't have any choice but to refrain from judging Roberts' possible place on the 2018 final roster until I've seen what role(s) he's assigned in 2018 Camp and how well he appears to execute compared to others who may be competing with him.

 

[BTTA]

Useful conversation, appreciated. Some thoughts.

All of the LB assessments assume Hightower is back, recovered and strong, and durable. His injury history is significant and his body isn't getting younger. This seems to be the biggest variable in the LB situation.

The SB is the most recent game but shouldn't carry any more weight in player and positional evals than any other game. Primacy/recency, plus the emotional significance of that game, blow its value way out of proportion in these early post-season threads. The team is first built to win in the AFC East, then to beat Pittsburgh and one or two emerging AFC rivals. Getting to the SB is a massive accomplishment, and that game is always against a talented team that's playing really well at the moment, like Philly and Atlanta and Seattle. Those teams have typically fallen off the next year; building a team to beat them is reactionary.

If Hightower is back, strong, and durable, and the Pats sign a couple of players from last year, and the injured guys come back and are competitive, the front seven is solid going into the draft and UDFA. If they add a talented young player at DE and OLB in the draft, it can be a strength of the team in '18. That's a lot of "ifs" but that's the way it is every year.