Quote:
Originally Posted by BigHairedAristocrat
The #1 player our team needs if we switch to a 3-4 is a NT. Sure, AH could play NT, but it would be a horrible waste of his talent. from everything i've read, AH would be best used as a DE in a 3-4 defense. Wilfork is your prototypical NT. i'm nowhere near an expert, but i dont see how there would be any problem with having these two play side-by-side.
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Why would be playing a great player at a critical position be a terrible waste of his talent?
Dallas plays a one-gap 3-4 system which is easily transferrable into a 4-3 or 4-2-5, and Jay Ratliff, one of the best three DTs in the game, plays the nose for them. He's not out there eating up three gaps with pure size, but he is
controlling multiple gaps and playing his game in the backfield.
If Dallas moved Ratliff to the 5-techinque, he'd probably do just fine there, but he'd be further away from the football and playing the run more directly based on positioning, and probably wouldn't have quite the same effect on the game. Ratliff was a superstar on that defense before DeMarcus Ware was a complete player, and before Marcus Spears, Mike Jenkins, and Anthony Spencer all broke out. But he only got a chance because Dallas wasn't afraid to put him in a spot where, traditionally, the NT is a little bigger. Not that he's some twig out there at 305.
Haynesworth is absolutely athletic enough to play a 5-technique in the 3-4, but he certainly projects as a nose tackle, independent to the talent around him. I'm sure he'd play both in any 3-4 alignment, but it's not like this team has a great need for a superstar backup NT. Any old vet would fill a gap just fine. And then you could get someone cheap in the 5th round to split time. Not a big investment, but you're using what you have instead of overspending.
The nose tackle/defensive tackle market is really deep this year, and the draft might be even deeper. Locking into Wilfork against everything would be ignoring the market conditions to the 100th power, but more importantly, would be the epitomy of telling the other 31 (30?) owners that we'd be uninterested in ever playing with a cap again, since we can support a 300 million dollar payroll, and they (mostly) can't.