Rashawn Slater

[mrcompletely11]

18 minutes ago, OldhamA said:

Its a passing league. You need 4 good CBs these days or you get abused. You can scheme around a LT - as evidenced by the Panthers the last two years.

Not sure if serious..........

[OldhamA]

14 minutes ago, mrcompletely11 said:

Not sure if serious..........

Look, if Orlando Pace walks through that door that's one thing. If an average athlete with good technique walks through that door it's another.

Slater is that guy. Nice piece, but not a cornerstone.

But again I'm in the minority here.

[Icege]

Was my #1 OT in the draft

Glad to see him doing it up in LAC. They got a good one. Slater plays mean and nasty from start to finish.

[ForJimmy]

So if we drafted Slater our defense isn’t getting off the field on 3rd downs, we will have less sacks, and teams will just pass on our CB not named DJax all game. That’s harder to watch than quick passes IMO. Plus Slater was further from a sure thing than Horn if you ask me.

[Mvp2014]

I was honestly surprised we didn't draft him.  

[kungfoodude]

You do understand that the reason you spend on a high quality tackle is that the more time you have to pass, the easier it is to get open? Even Jalen Ramsey will struggle to cover for 5+ seconds. Not to mention, CB's have been the biggest recipient of the rule changes against them to push offense. Also, the LT is protecting the absolute most important piece of a successful, modern NFL offense.....YOUR QUARTERBACK.

Edited September 14, 2021 by kungfoodude

[Waldo]

10 minutes ago, kungfoodude said:

You do understand that the reason you spend on a high quality tackle is that the more time you have to pass, the easier it is to get open? Even Jalen Ramsey will struggle to cover for 5+ seconds. Not to mention, CB's have been the biggest recipient of the rule changes against them to push offense. Also, the LT is protecting the absolute most important piece of a successful, modern NFL offense.....YOUR QUARTERBACK.

[NCBlu]

We have a LT they just want to play him at RT

[pantherclaw]

Is this the thread where we don't care.about our elite defense, and should have reached for a guy?

[AU-panther]

This argument about which position is more valuable can go on forever.

A great D-line can make your secondary look better, or a great secondary can give a D-line time to be great.

A great LT can give your QB time to pass to a WR, or what if your WRs are really good and the first read is always open?  Most sacks happen after the first read.

This idea that one position is more important to winning and losing to a degree of multiples is ludicrous, outside of QB of course, an elite CB and and elite LT will both help your team tremendously and difference between the two is alot smaller than people on here think.

With that being said I would still put a higher emphasizes on finding OTs in the draft than CBs, but for a different reason.  I think good to great OTs, especially LTs are harder to find.  Also goods one, heck even average ones are more expensive in free agency.

Think about this, lets say you spend a first round pick on a LT and he turns out to be average, its still a decent pick because average ones are expensive in free agency.

 

 

 

[MasterAwesome]

2 hours ago, kungfoodude said:

You do understand that the reason you spend on a high quality tackle is that the more time you have to pass, the easier it is to get open? Even Jalen Ramsey will struggle to cover for 5+ seconds. Not to mention, CB's have been the biggest recipient of the rule changes against them to push offense. Also, the LT is protecting the absolute most important piece of a successful, modern NFL offense.....YOUR QUARTERBACK.

If your success largely hinges on your quarterback play, then you have to acknowledge that an elite CB significantly hinders the success of the opposing QB which is equally important to winning football.  Otherwise you're just hoping to win shootouts every week.  I mean it really just boils down to having a well-oiled offense vs. a shutdown defense.  A shutdown CB is as vital to your defense as a shutdown OT is to your offense.

Also an elite LT is obviously super important but the returns are less realized when you have other major holes in your o-line, otherwise you're just getting exploited elsewhere (like up the middle for us).  If an LT was the missing piece for us then yeah maybe Jalen Ramsey would be having to cover for 5+ seconds out there.  That being said, same goes for CB...but I would argue Horn kinda was the missing piece for our defense to a much larger degree than Slater would be the missing piece for our o-line.  Finding an LT would have gone a long way towards solidifying our o-line but I think that's something we would have benefited from more in the next couple seasons after one or two more drafts/FAs, to fill our other o-line voids.

All things equal, I'd probably still take an elite LT over an elite CB just due to the conceptual risk mitigation of injury to your QB.  I just don't think it's the slam-dunk obvious choice that people make it out to be.

[PNW_PantherMan]

2 hours ago, pantherclaw said:

Is this the thread where we don't care.about our elite defense, and should have reached for a guy?

To be fair, it's not really a reach if the guy ends up being a great player.  The general consensus outside of our team seemed to be that even Horn was a bit of a reach as Surtain was graded as the best corner.  Was he a reach?  I don't think so, because he's probably going to be a better player than Surtain.

That being said, I'm not mad we got Horn.  He's a bad dude.

[Cuttinedge]

It wouldn’t matter if we had a LT that could hold his block for 5 seconds. Sam’s still gonna have psi in his face from the LG and C position. 
LT isn’t the only spot we need on the oline at present or either  let the rookies show what they can do. Elf and paradis play on skates 

[AU-panther]

On a side note, something to maybe learn about drafting from looking at Slater's success so far.

During draft season we all get caught up with trying to evaluate players, often looking at production vs measurables and you can make an argument for both.

Someone like Little had good overall tape and measurables but struggled at the senior bowl, Slater didn't have great measurables but excelled against great competition.  Someone like Gaulden had good tape but not the measurables to translate.

Slater's measurables were not the best but his production was great, but more importantly his production against good players was also great at the college level, mostly his game against Chase.

So maybe measurables help you to predict if production can translate to the next level but if that player already has production against next level talent then the measurables aren't that important. 

In short, maybe his game tape from his matchup against Chase Young at the college level should have held more weight in the evaluation process.