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Scott Fowler on game, Young, Panthers. Not wrong
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By SmokinwithWilly · Posted
I'm not a fan for a couple reasons. You have to nail your 1st 2 picks, especially when you're lacking as much talent across the board as we were and you traded away the number 1 overall pick. Barring injury, they need to be immediate 4 year starters, and on this team, that's a pretty low bar to hurdle. I also really hated the FA strategy building up to the draft, particularly the guards, and the draft strategy itself. A strategy that focused on building around a QB that was so terrible he had no business being on the field. It was clear to pretty much everyone, BY wasn't ready to be an NFL starter. We dumped everything to build around him in the hopes he would become what we drafted him to be. And while the end of the year started showing some promise, we still don't know going into year 3 if he's going to live up to the hype. Dumping all your resources to build around a single player (and hope for the best) isn't as important as building a complete team. If there's any certainty in drafting, it's HQ interior linemen are found in rounds 2-3, and even 4 pretty regularly. Dumping a ton of FA cash into those 2 spots didn't make sense when we have so many holes. Draft guards, pay tackles. It's one of the staple principles of oline building. XL was always a project. He didn't have years of consistent high end performance in college. His hands are bricks, he body catches a lot, and he looks more like a 4th round receiver than a 1st. Maybe he improves, maybe not. He looked extremely raw as a rookie and we can only hope he might develop by the time his rookie contract expires. I'm always a fan of drafting guys that actually have hands coming out of college. Who cares if you can get open, or fight for the ball, when you can't actually come down with it consistently. Then we get to Brooks. Taking a RB with a torn ACL who may or may not see the field in 24/25 over Zach Frasier, who already looks the vet at a position we've been severely deficient at since pre-injury Ryan Kalil. Relying on Corbett, coming off injury, to move from guard to center is never ideal, and the injury bug bit yet again, and we were scrambling trying to find someone to lead our 200m offensive line. And the worst part, we traded up to do it giving up 2 5ths to take Brooks when we're lacking talent everywhere. Wallace, meh. Sanders looked good before that neck injury. But now we're into day 3 where expectations aren't extremely high for making the roster, unless it's the Panthers, but you can find some position players and rotational players to start plugging the Swiss cheese roster. I give him credit for getting Coker as an UDFA and the trade for Jackson, but if that's the highlight of your draft, there's some serious problems with your drafting. If we had saved the FA money spent on the guards, drafted JPJ and Frazier, and still been in pretty close to the same spot, better off cash wise (or spent on other FAs) going into FA this year. Coker ended up playing better than XL in less time. Brooks is Eric Shelton 2.0 right now. And we used 5 picks in the 1st 2 rounds, if you count those included in the trades. That's too much given up for a team that won 2 games the year prior. JMO, but I think the whole offseason strategy last year was flawed from start to finish. -
Everything hinges on his ability to build through the draft so it's unknown until we see the upcoming draft class in action. That's all that will ultimately matter. We cannot afford anymore duds or projects especially in the early rounds.
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