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SI Most Disappointing - Star


unicar15

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http://www.si.com/nfl/2014/12/23/most-disappointing-2014-nfl-jay-cutler-doug-martin?page=2&devicetype=phone

Stars lack of tackles and sacks lands him here. Hard to measure success at his position tho. The LBs he is tasked with keeping clean were both almost pro bowlers and KK had a superb year getting to the QB. So...if he's playing the NT in our D I gauge his success more by unit success than anything else.

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Star does an alright job clogging the middle he does sometimes beat his man or men off the ball and gets into the backfield in a hurry he just hasn't been able to make a play. What you don't get with star are those splash plays that KK gets. It is only his 2nd season and remember most DTs take a couple years to get into their prime

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Hooray for SI doing their homework.  Oh, wait...

 

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/12/18/5393978/star-lotulelei-struggling-in-2nd.html

 

 

Lotulelei rolled his ankle in the Week 10 loss to Philadelphia and missed the next two games. But that hasn’t been the sole cause of his less-than-desirable season.

Panthers coach Ron Rivera pointed to Carolina’s moving Lotulelei around this season as part of the reason his numbers aren’t up. The team has used him as a tackle over the offensive guard and a nose tackle lined up over center.

“At defensive tackle you’re going to have the games where there aren’t a lot of plays for you to make,” fellow tackle Dwan Edwards said. “He’s been in position to make some big plays and maybe someone else didn’t do their job. It’s tough because you need everyone working together for you to be successful, and sometimes it just doesn’t happen.”

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The biggest problem for Star was not having Hardy next to him. You had to double Hardy which meant Star was singled most of last year. With Hardy gone teams could double Star and neutralize him. Imagine what we would have had if Hardy joined Star, Short and Johnson this year. At least one if not as many as three of them could have been playing at a probowl level. The lack of push by our DEs for much of the early season were a big reason why our secondary was so poor. That and the overall lack of speed along and poor tackling were a recipe for disaster. Our tackles were susceptible to losing gap integrity in an attempt to pressure the play and instead give up a big run play up the middle. We gave up so many big plays on third down where last year we were shutting them down. It took players like Benwikere and Boston to come in and set an aggressive tone to challenge the veterans to step up their game.

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