I think pressure up the middle was even more important than another edge rusher and that's why they got Jason Jones. The combo of Jones with Clemons may improve the rush a lot this year while Bruce gets up to speed.

We will need to draft a younger version of Jason in the next year or so as well, in
my opinion.

_________________
Help bring peace to the South LA / Puget Sound communities. Are you in?
http://www.abetterla.org | https://www.causes.com/fb/donations/new?cause_id=62891&fundraiser_id=14387774&m=2799c87f
http://www.abetterseattle.com | https://twitter.com/#!/ABetterSeattle

Maybe we already have them in Sruggs and Howard, Both look promising prospects. I taking the wait and see approach. It's easy to get discouraged with what we saw on Sunday. But we went all last year with a mediocre pass rush and still was a top 10 defense. In a few weeks I think we'll start to hit our stride as a team.

Ha! I'm just trying to make sense of the pick and it's the only thing that makes any sense to me. I really like him but the timing is all wrong if your team is at anymore than darkhorse status. DE's are rarely ever immediate hits. But his speed have ever seen anything like it? He just needs a bit of technique and 15-20 lbs of muscle and he may change the position much like L.T. did for linebackers or Ronnie Lott for safeties. That may be a bit of an overreach but with the direction the NFL is going it's plausible.

This should have just been the first line and I'd facebook like it.

But to the rest of it, they made it clear there was a 4 year plan for this organization. Whether they meant we would be a winning team by then, or it'll take 4 years to become that is unknown. We are on year 3 with a promising young, fiery, and mostly unexperienced defense. It took Carroll a few years to get USC where he wanted it, even if college is a different monster than the NFL, but in respect to recruiting and getting 'what you want' takes time.' IMO there is no way Carroll is on the hot seat this season unless we go 0-16. Paul Allen knew there was a 4 year plan and I imagine he will trust the braintrust til that point. Purely going off talent this team should be a 9-10 win team without any outside factors like lucky breaks. As much as I think we should have steamrolled the Cards, they are 8-2 in their last 10 games, which is tied with only the Pats.

Bruce Irvin on paper is exactly what this defense needed. PURE speed from a hybrid LE/DE type player. His main knock was he didn't have the 'NFL pass rush repertoire' and relied on just being more athletic. So far that seems what he still has, but he is young and very moldable. Every interview points out he is willing to work and improve, and I guess as fans that's all we can hope. We just need to trust we have the coaching to make him elevate his play to what he can be. DE is a tough position for young players since they are going against for the most part, the best linemen in the league, and it is hard to get a JPP or Aldon Smith to immediately make an impact. I personally wanted Chandler Jones because he seemed to be incredibly NFL ready and to this point seems to be just that for the Pats. But they draft very well for value every year, so it is expected.

All in all, a 7-9 team shouldn't just take a shot on a player in the first round for hopes on what he could be. We are unorthodox in a sense where we plug players in to a spot that they can succeed more than any other standard position, and I'm sure the hope for this season is Bruce can learn, improve, and still see a lot of playing time while making some impact. If he can consistently make pressure this year even if it doesn't result in sacks, I think that is enough to warrent a first round draft pick for him.

They did, but just because you don't have the front line strength doesn't mean you shouldn't take the better long term player. I mean you have to weigh things out in terms of immediate impact, overall risk, ceiling, etc, but I'd rather go this route.

Personally I much prefer a long term "willing to take risks" FO than a short term "Win now/keep my job" GM, unless you are legitimately in the closing of your proverbial window. I think things just turn out better generally.

Now I do think Pete and John thought Irvin could impact this year, they said as much. So we probably need to see him do that to at least fill their expectations for this year. At the end of the year I don't think one can say "He's a defensive end, they take a long time to develop, adjust to NFL etc etc" as an excuse for him if he is a complete failure in his role this year. While it's okay not to write him off as a bust and it's a valid response to his career chances, it's not for what he was supposed to be this year. So that would be a disappointment in my opinion.

I'm optimistic he figures it out sooner than later. He's got the tools and the coaching to do it. Course he will probably be in some gray area of production and everyone will have something to say come next year's off season.

I think this here is key. DE's are hard to hit on in general, particularly speed rushers. They gotta take shots to get one as it's tough to win without one. And even more so when your are trying to win via the "elite" defense ground game route.

Yes, since we started a rookie QB, which tells me they think that rookie is the future, this basically becomes a project year with hopes that we can still win big while we go thru the rookie lumps. So we can allow Irvin some time to grow as well.

If Flynn was our starter i'd say the answer was no, as then it woudl be more of a win now type scenario.

I have a feeling that by the end of the season both Wilson and Irvin will be playing like first round picks. I'm also pretty certain we might have to take some lumps along the way and i'm ok with that. Half step back now for 5 steps forward next season.

And I really hope that Carroll allows them to both keep playing thru any lumps that might arise.

_________________

Okay, fair point. I kid because I know you can take it, Buttercup.

_________________
@ryanadamdavis

They can afford a project about as well as they can afford a game winning drive by the likes of Kolb while they left irvin on the field.

_________________
"Improvement" can come from who you play-

I thought that abomination of a dog avatar was horrible but Kiper seriously? Are you trying to make everyone want to kill you or just being a contrarian for the lolz? Now that I have been here a minute I get your whole modus operandi but there are limits.

"Loser" symbol or not that man knows less about football than my non-sports liking Aunt.

No, wrong yet again, We had the game winning drive, but did not execute.

I didn't bother reading everyones posts, but the answer is NO, NEVER, HELL NO! !st round picks should be first year starters that make some sorta impact on your team. Unless it's a QB that you wanna understudy. Save the projects for the 5th round and later.

Why let facts stand in the way of another chance to be a "Debbie Downer". I admit that I'm pragmatic and want results before I fully jump in but Verndog is ridiculous and does it on purpose in my opinion.

This is pretty much the same reason I made that "trade - phone call" thread a couple weeks ago. There might have been some opportunity out there, particularly with the Eagles, to add a pass rusher to this roster as insurance for Bruce Irvin. Much of the season is still ahead of us, but we are more than 1 game in. We've had 4 preseason games of Irvin to look at and lots of TC reports. The expectation was that Irvin probably would struggle in 2012, but there was hope that he could be an Aldon Smith/Von Miller story. So far, it appears very likely that he's going to be the former, not the latter. And that's a problem, because Seattle has banked on Irvin to be the latter- as evidenced by how they provided no competition whatsoever for the Raheem Brock role.

Seattle said that pass rush was their top priority during the offseason. They repeated this over and over. Before and after the draft, Carroll talked about finding his Von Miller. Seattle had chances to sign or trade for other pass rushers and didn't. I look at that body of evidence, and I think it's pretty clear that they didn't plan on Irvin waiting until year 4 to start contributing.

I say this as a huge pre-draft fan of Irvin's, and a huge fan of this FO, but I think that calculation was a big gamble, and it already looks like it is a gamble they will lose. Irvin has special talent as a pass rusher, but he might be even more raw than project-passrusher-posterchild JPP was in terms shedding blocks. In TC, he was getting stonewalled by Alex Barron. In the preseason, he was a total non-factor until the final (and most meaningless) preseason game, a game against Oakland, who is terrible and wasn't even really trying in that game. Now we've seen him be a non-factor against AZ, who had a terrible and injury depleted line and a terrible QB.

Does this mean Irvin will bust? Of course not. Does this mean that we can definitively say that Irvin will not be Von Miller right away? No, we can't even say that, because stranger things have happened. Can we say that it's looking doubtful that he'll be Von Miller? Yeah, that's probably safe to say at this point, as early as it is. He looks years away from being a complete pass rusher right now.

Can Seattle afford for Irvin to be a project? No, not really. As said above, Carroll's language and expectations were that the pass rush was a major problem- a top priority. It's not something he hopes is fixed in a few years- it's something he wants fixed NOW. It's hard to criticize Carroll though. He had no real shot at Mario Williams in FA. Cliff Avril was franchised. And who knows, maybe John Schneider did make some phone calls around the 53 cut down looking for pass rush help. I'd be a little surprised if he didn't. My only complaint was that Seattle passed on Vinny Curry in round 2, who looks an awful lot like Chris Clemons jr. on tape (fittingly, he went to the Eagles). But Seattle needed a fast MLB, and they had the 3rd rounder reserved for Wilson, so it is what it is.

If this problem continues all season, I hope people realize that we might see two offseasons in a row where pass rush is the top priority. Carroll won't rest until this issue is fixed. As a defensive mind, and as a former DB, he appreciates pass rush more than most. Irvin has a ton of ability, but I think we might have to wait a painfully long amount of time before he cashes in on it.

_________________

"I believe there’s merit to the idea that once something in life becomes conventional, it’s no longer the safest path to success." -Matt Waldman
"If everyone's thinking alike, no one's thinking." -Bill Walsh

I do not mind them trying to get him going, as long as they do not do it on our 3 yard line on 3rd down and put him in for Red Bryant who just batted down a pass on 2nd down, and then have AZ run to his side and score a TD when if Red was in it would have been stopped!! Use Irvin on 3rd and long only! I mean honestly I like big red being in there on 3rd downs, he seems quicker this year and he is a ball batting beast!!!!

Good post kearly. I don't necessarily agree with Irvin being the Alex Smith of pass rushers but like you said, stranger things have happened. I don't know why, but I immediately thought of Derrick Burgess when you made that comparison.

I think Irvin will be stellar this season. Maybe 4 or 5 sacks. Some might be disappointed, but I fully expect Scruggs and Howard to put up solid production in the sack department as well (3 or 4 from Scruggs, 2 from Howard possibly) so hopefully that'll keep the pass rush from being completely anemic.

_________________
Talkin Seahawks All Day, All Night @ my blog Seafense! http://seafense.blogspot.com/

Too soon to tell. Going to need to see him in some different scenarios against some different competition before I pass anything resembling judgement. I seem to remember being all bunged up with dread after the first few games last year when Clem had bugger all for sacks, but he did pretty alright last year when it was all said and done. Some scenarios and schemes freeze some pass rushers out, and some scenarios and schemes give them opportunities to shine. have to see him against a few different looks before I can have anything resembling an opinion.

I'll get back to you with an opinion of some sort after week four. Hopefully he has about 4 or 5 sacks by that point and it'll be a big Bruce Irvin love-in around here by then.

_________________
Papaki douchebag love turtle long time

What...? it's not like anyone banged a turtle or anything. Just chill.....

well no wonder that alex smith was such a bad quarterback for so long..that was the real reason.

First post guys. Happy to be starting now. My belief is that yes the hawks can wait a half season or a full one for irvin to light a spark and learn his techniques. I mean, if the hawks play D like they did last year would u give up on PC's plan for it? We have clemons still (looks super legit) and up graded innterior pressure with jones.

I love everyone's armageddon spirit...AFTER ONE GAME! it was predicted and fully implemented by everyone. chill lets see what happens in a few weeks.

OR WE CAN OVERREACT TO THAT RIGHT NOW -_-'

two words... mario f'ing williams