Quote:
Originally Posted by Sheriff Gonna Getcha
To be honest, I thought we underutilized Sellers on 3rd down. Even if Leonard is great, and all indications suggest that he is or will be, I'd like to see more of Cooley and Sellers on 3rd down.
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I agree. What makes this past offseason so disappointing is that not only did we break the bank 4 seperate times, but we didn't actually solve any of our needs in doing so. I think it's important that next year we use our secondary recievers less, and use guys like Cooley and Sellers more in the passing game.
Imagine where we'd be had we not signed either Andre Carter or traded for Brandon Lloyd and Duckett. (Archuleta, Fauria, Randle El, and Collins would have been our only pre June signings). It's safe to assume that if we had the 3rd round selection in 2006, we would have traded up with that instead of our 2007 second rounder with Rocky. Now just like this year, Prioleau tears his ACL three strides into the season, and Archuleta struggles in coverage as we end up losing 11 games in a dissapointing year, one in which we use the final 7 games to break in Jason Campbell.
Fast foward to Sunday, January 28, 2007. We are 4 million under the cap. We return David Patten for 2007 as the third reciever, and receiver while certainly not a strength of this team, is still no weakness, and we can easily account for this by giving more looks to Cooley and Sellers. Randle El is still capable of catching 30-35 balls a year and producing scores in the punt return game. Archuleta is still the highest paid safety in NFL history, and so far has been a horrible bust. But now we head into the draft with all of our picks, and the ability to draft defensively without trading down. We grab an impact D lineman, maybe Brian Leonard, or Patrick Willis in the 2nd, a starting caliber safety in the 3rd, and more line help (either side of the ball in the 4th).
All of a sudden, we are in great shape for 2007, and we are in a much better position despite still making the Archuleta move.
The reason why I left the Archuleta move in this scenario is because I didn't think it was a bad move at the time (Nor has it hurt as much as any of the three moves I'm about to discuss). No film or stat study could have told us that his play would drop off this much. The Lloyd, Duckett and Carter moves were bad moves even at the time. None of those guys underachieved here, we just got exactly what was advertised. We costed ourselves our 2nd, 3rd, and 4th round selections to get those 3, and we then proceded to break the bank with Carter (who disallows us to take a pure pass rusher like Adams [a guy who is likely better than Carter] in the draft because they play the exact same position) and Lloyd, who was by all accounts an average WR, and Duckett (a career tip toe runner) wasn't even extended...which was a pretty good decision considering now we aren't stuck with him.
Frusterating.