Quote:
Originally Posted by BossChief
Cut Ragland and sign Zach Brown.
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It looks like they might have room for both.
As I see it here, the defense looks like they're trying to get MORE heavy into sub-packages.
People are freaking out over the 'starting LB corps' of Wilson, Ragland and Hitchens...and maybe that's fair, but I gotta believe that unit's gonna be on the field maybe 10-15% of the time and in fairly obvious run situations only. Or maybe a little more play against teams that seem hell-bent on controlling the clock against us.
Because Ragland and Wilson should be pretty credible run defenders in a 4-3. And if you got someone like Brown, you could have an 'intermediate' package that puts Brown in there instead of Ragland while trying to keep Ragland fresher to keep pounding downhill.
Meanwhile in Nickel situations you can use DoD and Hitchens, or if you added Brown you could mix those 3 guys around depending on offensive personnel.
I'm not sure there's any sense in worrying ourselves about the starting LB corps at the moment because it probably just doesn't matter that much. Now with more teams going to the hurry-up, we could get stuck in some unfavorable packages and that's why I'd like to see Brown brought in on a short-term deal as a happy medium that shouldn't get terribly exposed regardless of what's being run.
But I don't think that Brown means you have to get rid of Ragland. And I don't think that Ragland is completely without value if you are trying to have a situational 'heavy' package.