[The Goat]

Threads/comments about Fletcher drive me batty. Ignorance abounds.

- He played through a grueling injury last season. Compare that to Garcon (who's become the little darling of many a fan) and others who sit out, and then take your criticisms of Fletcher and shove them right up your asses. He missed a few tackles, but still is one of the best tacklers in all of pro football. He struggled to cover the best TEs in the league, just like every other defensive player who tries to cover Witten and Gonzales. I remember Fletcher defending some passes too, again fighting through a painful injury.

- When scheme and mid-game adjustments were reportedly turned over to Fletcher for the 2nd half of the season the defense improved markedly, for several reasons. One is that he took himself out of coverage more which is exactly what should happen. You don't take your premier tackler, who also has elite intuition for finding the ball on passes over the middle, and ask him to chase a TE to the outside of the field. That's just stupid scheming. Fletcher place is in the middle of the field on running and passing downs, period. Riley and the outside LBs need to cover the outside.

- Finally, it drives me up a ****ing wall when we pretend there's a replacement for Fletcher just waiting in the wings. Even if you could find a guy to PLAY at Fletcher's level right now, he won't have the mastery of the defense anytime soon. We don't have a 1st round pick in next year's draft either, so realistically the guy taking over for Fletcher next season will have to be our biggest and most expensive FA signing. Fortunately we'll have the cap room so it seems. But don't pretend like it's going to be easy.

He's arguably the most under appreciated player I've seen in my lifetime.

End rant.