Gruden Says Start Cousins

[MTK]

Originally Posted by GTripp0012

Could have done all that with the guys in camp in preseason too. Coaches chose to go with this group.

The safety situation seemed sloppier than the other position groups. I don't know for sure that this was their plan A, but I'm not sure who was available in August that they could have gone to get if only they had more cap dollars.

Point is they could have had a better group to begin with in camp if they had an extra $18M. Same for the year before. The fact they brought in a bunch of warm bodies at RT to "compete" with Polumbus tells us how sad of a story it was.

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by Mattyk

Point is they could have had a better group to begin with in camp if they had an extra $18M. Same for the year before. The fact they brought in a bunch of warm bodies at RT to "compete" with Polumbus tells us how sad of a story it was.

Pashos in particular obviously outplayed Polumbus in the preseason. I think they really wanted to keep that group of five OL together because they anticipated it would get better (and that they could promote from within). It's gone the other direction.

The OL hasn't struggled from a lack of spending. They're spending $3, $4, and $5 million a year on their IOL starters and every member of the OL except Polumbus has made every start since Week 1 of last year. I don't know if the OL next year will be any better, but I'm pretty certain they'll spend less than this year.

[MTK]

Originally Posted by GTripp0012

Pashos in particular obviously outplayed Polumbus in the preseason. I think they really wanted to keep that group of five OL together because they anticipated it would get better (and that they could promote from within). It's gone the other direction.

The OL hasn't struggled from a lack of spending. They're spending $3, $4, and $5 million a year on their IOL starters and every member of the OL except Polumbus has made every start since Week 1 of last year. I don't know if the OL next year will be any better, but I'm pretty certain they'll spend less than this year.

That's not really saying much is it?

I agree I think they wanted to keep the starting 5 together and build off last year, I don't think they anticipated things going south so quickly with basically 4 of those 5.

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by Mattyk

That's not really saying much is it?

I agree I think they wanted to keep the starting 5 together and build off last year, I don't think they anticipated things going south so quickly with basically 4 of those 5.

To be clear, the OL performance going south is not something I hold against the coaching staff. Letting the team regress to the point where the OL performance becomes a weekly topic is something I hold against the coaching staff. I thought the plan to retain all five OL would be at least adequate to win half our games.

They've been exposed as inadequate, but the failure of the team has been complete, and cannot be pinned on a single unit.