Wenhawk":2elwfv29 said:
kearly":2elwfv29 said:
Attyla, I appreciate the thought, effort, and especially the formatting you do in your posts. Good work.
Agreed, great contribution. He may not have as many posts as some but this one shows the knowledge of a Vet.
Qustion, what round do you think we can get a LB who will beat out Malcom Smith, Corey Toomer, and or any other LB alreayd on our Roster for the starting WLB spot?
This draft seems deeper at LB than last year so if Toomer a 5th round pick couldn't make the active roster. I think that a 5th this year would be is a heated competion to beat out a 5th rd LB who now has 1 year in the pros under his belt.
I think the LBs that will be available in the 4th would put up a good fight vs Smith for that spot, and a LB in the 2nd or 3rd should easily win the starting spot. Would you rather have a surefire(Green, Brown, Moore, ect) starting LB or one who had to struggle to beat out Smith?
Thanks for the kind words!
I think last years' class of LBs was kind of easy to lose track of. Many of the really quality LBs toiled in relative anonymity for bad clubs. I mean who really followed the Eagles, Titans or Bucs? Those teams were basically out of contention before the first day of fall. In truth, there were a lot of excellent LBs in the draft not named Kuechly or Wagner.
This years' crop is horribly slower than last years. I think there were 5 LBs who timed at the combine faster than all of the deflated pro day times of the best LBs this year outside of Gooden. Gooden would have been the third fastest LB in last years class. But Gooden didn't have the physicality of really any of the guys that went in the top 3 rounds of last year.
It's easy to lose sight of guys like Mychal Kendricks, Zach Brown, Lavonte David and Demario Davis from last year. Those guys are all going to be legit starters on opening day this year. Those guys were pretty outstanding last year. And I certainly don't see a Bobby Wagner or a Luke Kuechly to headline this class.
This years' class seems to be much bigger though. I also think they are in general more physical. Probably more attractive to 3-4 clubs than the speedy, but slighter class of 2012. It's not a bad class. But for our aims, I think the pickings are much much slimmer.
I do suspect you will be right in this sense: that this LB class will produce deeper in the draft, because of the glut of quality in the OL, DL, CB and WR groups. LBs are going to get squeezed out to rounds 3 and 4 that probably should be 2nd round worthy. It's unlikely that a run on LB talent will develop, but you can definitely see runs on at least 2 of those aforementioned groups. Maybe all 4 of them -- before teams in general start addressing the LB needs.
This draft is going to be a wild one. It's really one that fans shouldn't miss live. Because the anticipation of who is on the board when we pick is going to be very high. There will probably be no less than 5 prospects available that we never would have thought would last to our picks. The lead up to our selections is going to be neat to experience.
