AZ54

I don't see a playoff D on the horizon yet. There are too many young players we are going to rely on including: Floyd, Bullard, and one of the 3 draftees at safety (or HJQ). While I like the outlook for the future these players they have a lot to learn. Over at CB we have decent players but Porter is only going to be what he was last year so we'd need Fuller to step up in a big way. That is unless Floyd becomes an instant terror off the edge as a pass rusher. There will be some bumps in the road early on but having two good players like Freeman and Trevathan in the middle will help these other players a lot.

The UDFA ILBs from the last 3 offseasons will battle it out.

Good football player. I don't think he ran well at his Pro Day and that led to him being undrafted but his play speed looks faster than a 4.77, seems like he's running somewhere between 4.6-4.7. Cherry seems to have good instincts and awareness around the LOS but it's only a highlight film so we don't see how he handle blocks. I think he'll challenge Timu and Christian Jones for the last ILB roster spot. He's faster than Timu on film at least, and his lateral movement is better. Christian Jones is the best athlete among these three if only he can learn where to go and when to be there. Keep an eye on special teams during preseason. http://sportspagemagazine.com/football/col...ess-to-succeed/

I always feel like people misconstrue what I write. Just because I posted the highlights doesn't mean I think he'll make the team. All I said is he's worth bringing in to see if he can make the practice squad. Yes, I don't like highlights because they don't show the negative plays. The two UDFA's that I think have the best chance to develop into NFL players are Braunecker, Don Cherry LB, and Roy Robertson-Harris. Braunecker could very well make the roster over Khari Lee especially if he's better on special teams. I could see Cherry challenging Timu for a spot as well. Robertson-Harris is likely just a practice squad candidate this season.

Why do you assume the guy negotiating the contracts was responsible for the Saint's cap issues and not the guy making the final decisions on how those contracts should be structured: Micky Loomis? Everyone works (most people do) and it's to hard to find people who don't disagree with their boss. Maybe Pace and this guy got along but disagreed with the guidance Loomis was giving at times? Look at the data to see how Pace does things: McPhee can be cut after this year with just a $1.5mil dead money cap hit. Trevathan's deal is also front loaded so that if we want or need to we can get out after just 2 years with a $2.5mil hit, and just $1.5mil in the last year. It's early in his GM career but so far he has hedged his bets and avoided long term cap issues. In two offseasons he has also stayed away from expensive FA who can really cause cap issues preferring instead to work the 2nd tier of FA, and has done so successfully IMO.

I love how he plays the game, especially his blocking, but against this level of competition it's easy to do. He's going to need a lot more lower body strength to play like that in the NFL. It is always hard to judge speed against lower levels of competition but he's not going to run away from any DBs in the NFL. He has enough mobility to find gaps in a defense and he's got good hands and tracks the ball well so it's worth giving him a shot to see how develops.

Word out of Baltimore is that they'll keep Monroe. They have $12mil in cap space and cutting him now leaves them $6mil in dead money and just $2mil in cap space.

Another thing that stood out to me was players complaining about the lack of practice time in pads (without contact). It is what their union negotiated for but maybe in the future they will back off these restrictions somewhat. The big guys need to get some contact in the offseason to improve their craft.

https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2016/...2016-nfl-draft/ https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2016/...2016-nfl-draft/

It is impossible to know how he'll perform once the pads go on but looking at the practice photos of Cornelius Washington he has bulked up quite a bit for his new role at DE. He made some noise last year in pass rushing drills early in camp before his injury. http://www.chicagobears.com/multimedia/pho...72-3dcb23fcef47

No but we were working to trade either of Young or Houston. I don't see Houston getting cut but Young could very well get replaced. FWIW Schofield made Sam Acho replaceable on the Cardinals a few years ago. He's a good "effort" player but not that talented athletically. If that is the plan I'd just prefer to keep Willie Young on the roster unless we get a good offer for him.

Don't misconstrue all the hype about DHC and his special teams success blocking kicks. He's a good safety prospect. While I expect him to be successful on special teams for us those blocked kicks were all done at a much lower level of competition. The media, being what they are, won't watch the game films that show how good of a safety prospect DHC is.

There's always talk of wanting/needing an inline blocking TE but last year Zach Miller was often used as an H-back or FB. Braunecker is far better at blocking than Miller and I can see him playing in that role for us.

By the 2nd half of the season I expect this guy will be the one sharing snaps with Miller, if not sooner. He's not great at anything but he's good all-around from blocking inline, blocking in space, good hands, enough speed and mobility to work the deep middle of the field (ran 4.66 at Pro Day, 4.73 at combine). He's not going up against great competition to earn that #2 role but still I think he can be productive on the field. Among TEs at the combine he was top 3 in every category except 40yd where he was 5th but 2nd-5th were separated by just a couple hundredths. He ran a 6.90 3-cone so he has the quickness in/out of cuts to get separation. http://draftbreakdown.com/video/ben-braunecker-vs-yale-2015/ https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=braune...D&FORM=VIRE If not for the level of competition concerns, and the fact he's just 6'3" he'd have been drafted somewhere in the last few rounds. I'm still surprised we took Braverman in the 7th and not Braunecker given our TE need. Getting them both is great. A good team fills out the 2nd tier of their roster with players like these two.

Worth noting is that last year everyone viewed the lack of a true speed rushing OLB in the new scheme the biggest missing component to Fangio's defense along with a NT. Reality is NT are much easier to find than good edge rushers. Last year we took Kevin White in the draft at #7 (relatively deep draft for WRs) and immediately after us Vic Beasley was taken. Later in the 1st Rd Bud Dupree was taken at #22 and Shane Ray at #23. In the second round we passed on Randy Gregory for the second time (thankfully). Among those four players we could have either taken Beasley at #7, traded down and picked up Dupree/Ray and still taken Goldman in Rd 2, or taken a 2nd Rd shot at Gregory. Point is that we didn't do any of those things last year. I would say our OLB group played well enough in the 2nd half of the season to make OLB less of a need this year. Obviously we still needed to mix in a speed edge rusher. This year we traded up to get Floyd so it seems there must be something much better we see in him than the crop of edge rushers we bypassed last year.

Perfect, send Jordan Howard his direction early and often.

I wouldn't be surprised at all to see DHC beat him out for a starting job. But at a minimum Bush is going to be a good special teams player for us while he learns the job.

One thing this bodes well for is that Grasu is likely doing well in the offseason gaining strength. Even with the rumored health concerns having Slauson as a backup and for competition in camp would have made more sense if they were concerned with Grasu.

He's not a LT. As OG with his excellent use of hands and feet to get the proper angle on the block he should do well to seal off gaps for the RBs. If he handled LT in college adequately he'll be ok in pass protection too. I read somewhere that he needed to get stronger. He might not win the starting job so easily.

Jason, you really like how Derek Henry runs with his physical style, you should be very happy with this pick in the 5th Rd. Definitely not the same long speed as Henry but if you wanted a beast-mode to complement Langford we got one. The Michigan game is not one that I watched prior to the draft. What Howard did there was very impressive, and he showed great patience at times to let the play develop, at other times he was shifty enough laterally to find the gap, more than what I saw in other games. Keep him fresh in a rotation and DBs are going to have a long day if he can get to the 3rd level. I also saw him catch the ball, which might not be a strength of his, but he's capable of handling some easy outlet passes. He also had some good blitz pickups. He'll work well with Langford.

Bush is a very hard hitting safety so we have that. He's not an in-the-box type like Cash is and given the 2 (or perhaps 3) players we drafted at S, if we wanted Cash we'd have taken him. As near as I can tell, Fangio wants his defense is built to have the Dline and LBs take care of everything in the box with the DBs providing the coverage over the top. Amos had to make far too many plays in the box last year because ILBs either couldn't get off a block, ran to the wrong gap, or they over-ran the play (Christian Jones). The first thing we're all going to notice in game 1 is that our ILB actually make tackles around the line of scrimage.

If I'm not mistaken your original statement was: "Hoyer and Cutler are pretty close in skill set" From an athletic standpoint I just don't see it. I show highlights of passes that Cutler can make that Hoyer will never be able to throw. You have morphed the discussion from your original statement to one now where we talk about decision making. I didn't watch a single Houston game last year. I have seen Hoyer is several Cardinals games and Browns games. None of them impressed me at all. Hoyer is now on his 5th team after being a starter for 3 teams. As a backup he is better than anyone we could have drafted. He is not better than Cutler. You know this to be a fact: John Fox will start the best players. If Hoyer is better than Cutler he'll be our starter in week 1 and for the rest of the season.

Very surprised to see Slauson cut at this point. Rolle I expected would go sooner or later but Slauson I expected to at least compete for a roster spot. It feels like there is something in the works but it's impossible to know what.

I highly doubt we go this route. We've said all along we want more team speed, better athletes, and at this point in his career Whitner is nothing more than a in-the-box safety. If we wanted a mentor we'd have just kept Rolle.

But 1 year of Hoyer does? A year after which he was fired and couldn't find work to compete for a starting job? Anyway, I only put up the video so you can see the difference in the tight windows Cutler can put passes and Hoyer cannot. You can also see the arm strength difference on the first passes in each of their highlights.