The question you have to ask is...did Sutton have them play that way because it is ingrained into his defensive philosophy, or did he have them play that way because they sucked, and he thought that was the best? Not sure I know the answer to the question...but I will say that playing them that far off was not working, and changing it up would not have been any worse. That is completely on Sutton.

Yep I agree, I may get shit for this but I don't like the way Berry is being used. I think he needs to be a roamer type he covers so much ground out there that he needs to be playing deep safety more.

Conservative option:
-resign Demps and Abdullah. Let go of Robinson, Lewis, and Smith.
-Make one big free agent signing at Safety and a VERY high draft choice at corner. Coach em up and hope for the best next year.

Middle of the road option:
-resign EITHER Demps or Abdullah (probably Abdullah).
-Make two big draft picks defensive backs or trade up in the draft for a stud.
-resign EITHER Smith or Robinson (restructure?) for more depth.
-try to find one better than average starter in free agency and one more for depth.
-roster 10 dbs next year in case you find out you missed on one or more of these guys.

Aggressive option:
-Trade Flowers now. He's going to be worse next year than he was this year and he made the probowl for no good reason. His stock is low, and it sucks to take a loss on a guy you wanted around (and chose to keep over Carr), but you MUST cut bait on this guy before he becomes a Tyson Jackson story. Try your best to get a lone 2nd or a package of mid rounders.
-Use the acquired pick(s) to move up in the draft and take the best all around defensive back you can get. Grab another mid round guy with a high ceiling.
-let go of Lewis and Demps. They will have more value on a team looking for depth or special teams guys. We have Knile and Dexter for kick returns.
-Make a big free agent grab for a legit lockdown corner with the freed up money from Flowers' deal.

I think Sutton had his hand forced. He had to scheme around the fact that his corners can't play solid bump and run against top level guys.

We need a friggin TON of work back there, I'm not confident it can all be addressed by the start of 2014... Dorsey will need to pull every trick he has out of his hat to turn it into a strength in one year.

Demps (and Jordan) will be back. They are Reid's guys and both are great special teamers and back ups at the very least.

We need to let Lewis walk and I think we will.

I would try to resign Abdullah. He's a special teams stand out and has shown he can play when needed.

We won't sign Byrd, Ward or Bethea because they are to expensive.

Commings wasn't a very good corner in the first place so don't expect him to work out at safety. He's a longshot at best.

I'd look at someone like Malcom Jenkins and draft a FS if somebody a decent one falls to us.

At corner I would trade Flowers if possible. Ideally a 2nd and a 5th would be fair but I would take just a second. Rumor has it Tampa wants to get rid od Revis so they can continue running the cover 2. Revis didn't fit well in that system last season and Lovie runs the cover 2. His contract would be about equal to Bowe and Flowers combined. It's definately a longshot but I would try to trade both of them for Revis and I can't see any other scenario in which someone would trade for Bowe's contract. It's to expensive and he's not worth it. Flowers just doesn't fit anymore because he's small and he always gets hurt. It's obvious we want big corners because we signed four of them last year.

Smith is fine. He gets beat deep occasionally but I'd give him a B grade on the season.

I would try to sign Vontae Davis if we can afford him. He's big and fast and would be an upgrade over Flowers in Sutton's defense.

I like Cooper a lot and would be cool with starting him at LCB if we trade Flowers and don't sign anyone else. This is only his second season ever playing CB. He was a WR at Rutgers until his senior year. I think Al Harris will coach him up this offseason and really improve his press coverage. If we sign Davis or stay with Flowers, I would spend the offseason teaching him how to play nickel.

You definitely keep Parker. He has shown he can play in a pinch and is a special teams stand out.

We are missing a true nickel back. This has really turned into a problem. Some way somehow we need to find a true nickel back and this will probably have to be done through the draft. Right now Flowers is our best nickel and he's not that good at it. He's much better outside. Currently, Smith, Cooper, and Parker are not good nickel backs and are all built to play outside.

It's the fact that they could only play man. Seemed like every time we played zone coverage this year, something bad happened. Problem with man is, you beat it with crossing routes underneath.

That's where we got killed the second half of the season. The Last two games of the year, we only allowed like 6 completions past 10 yards, but the other team turned short passes into log gains. Same thing happened Saturday, against the Broncos etc.

This secondary has to learn how to play zone very well this offseason. If they can, with a new FS and maybe another addition, the defense will be fine.

Is the any reason Parker can't play FS? Too dumb or? He has good size, great speed and pretty decent coverage skills, but not good enough to be the starter at CB.

We need a word filter change.


Either "Sutton" or "Secondary" needs to be changed to "AIDS".

Demps is a solid backup/KR/ST guy
Abdullah is a solid backup/ST guy
Cooper and Parker are cheap and young
Sean Smith decent and cheap
Berry - decent but overpaid all to hell
Flowers - declining and overpaid
Commings - who knows
Lewis - worthless
Robinson - worthless

Pretty much how I see it as well.

:LOL:

Yep, exactly.

We do need a nickel corner and free safety at the very minimum out of this off-season. I would rather see us bring in more for competition and perhaps draft someone to replace Flowers on the outside.

We can't apparently cover for 1.5 seconds, so there is no way the pass-rush can suddenly make up for this.

We pretty much agree. We can afford to trade Flowers if someone will take the contract. That might buy us a free safety.