People sure are quick to hop on Succop's nuts just because he was the only marginal useful player from last year's draft.
Among rookies he had the worst average kickoff distance in the league and the worst TB% by far. Among all kickers he was significantly below average. He's a liability as a kickoff man.
As a placekicker, His 86% success rate this year was only marginally better than Conner Barth the season before (y'know, the guy we cut to make room for this kicking miracle). Though there was really no other rookie placekicker in the league this year (the others were KO specialists), he is pretty average when compared to the 2008 crop of rookies. He was roughly equal to Dan Carpenter (who?) and nowhere near Garrett Hartley in 2008. Going back to 2007, he was pretty much Nick Folk (though better than Mason Crosby, Crosby kicks in the worst environment in football).
All told, we got ourselves a guy that's likely going to be a slightly above average kicker. Huzzah, we drafted Lawrence Tynes. He actually looks a lot like Dan Carpenter...who was undrafted. Don't get me wrong, I like Succop and think he'll stick, but I do not understand how much love this dude gets for merely being pretty decent.
Greg Wesley gave us 5 years of well above average play and a couple more solid years beyond that. Considering the value of the respective skills and the difficulty of replacing their respective positions, I think Wesley will give us the better career.
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"If there's a god, he's laughing at us.....and our football team..."
"When you look at something through rose colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags."
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