Quote:Not at all.
They didn't fix anything. The secondary is slightly improved but nothing else has been improved
They didn't fix anything? Either you've decided to ignore reality, or you're just not being truthful. Which?
The first part of a rebuild is to tear something down, and that's precisely what this year has been about. They gutted the roster That's the first step.
Because this roster was almost completely void of talent, and there were more holes to plug than draft picks available, and this is a team that has made it abundantly clear they will build through the draft, then saying they didn't fix anything is really just disingenuous.
If part of fixing what was wrong with this teams means discarding the parts that won't be needed for the long term plans, then they've made several adjustments that would be seen as fixing problems.
One of the biggest problems they addressed was having one of the highest payrolls in the league coming off a 2-14 season. For all the talent the team allowed to walk that fans howled over, the team last year was only 2 wins better than the one we're looking at today, and we have created a tremendous amount of cap space that they will work to push forward to next year. Those are fixes.
It's a process. They've continued to work on developing their strategy, and to maximize the possibility in speeding this process up. They've added more draft picks with the Monroe trade, and I suspect we'll see more movement by the front office to continue to improve their number of draft picks if possible.
They also signed several players to 1 year deals, so it's clear they weren't looking at these guys as long-term fixes, but rather they were giving players a 1 year audition to prove if they had the ability to stick at this level. They weren't at a point where going large in free agency, either to get a QB or some other costly player would have had much of an immediate impact. They looked at what they had and decided these pieces couldn't be fixed quickly, so rather than do an impulse buy to placate fans like you who demand name recognition and expensive contracts from your free agents, they opted to keep the long game in mind.
With the additional draft picks, and a healthy amount of cap space, I think you'll see something more along the lines of targeted free agent acquisitions next year at critical positions of need that they were unable to address via the draft. I still don't think you'll see the team going out and making blockbuster deals, but I think the caliber of players we target next year will be geared more toward the long-term and not a 1 year band aid.
We've seen improvement with the defensive backs despite letting most of the starting secondary walk at the end of last season. We've added younger players who have shown signs of being at least as good as, if not better than what we had previously. They're getting some valuable playing time this year. Re-tooling the defensive line and linebacker corps has barely just begun. Both lines will be a focus next year no doubt. The team will have to find a quality pass rusher, and they're going to need more beef in the middle of the defensive line to hold point. They're going to need to add to the linebacker corps to give them guys who are more complete players than what we're trotting out there today.
On offense, we've seen the beginning of the rebuild with Joeckel. It's a shame he was injured before he could settle in at LT, but I think he'll be just fine when he returns. I'd call him a fix at LT even though Monroe was better than average. I think Joeckel will wind up being a better fit at the position over the long term barring health issues similar to Boselli.
The receiving corps seems to have improved. We've probably got a more complete group of receivers right now than we've had at any time in the past decade at least. This team has always been on a quest to find that third receiver. It's what drove Coughlin to draft R Jay Soward. For the first time, we might actually have 3 or even 4 solid, contributing receivers on the roster giving us significant improvement over what we've seen before.
I think the bottom line here is that if you want to look at it from the perspective of immediate results, it's easy to say they haven't fixed anything, but that's really shortsighted, and not looking at the comprehensive picture for where this team is headed. It was inevitable that in order to fix the mess these guys inherited, they were going to have to take a step back and fix the mess before they could put their stamp on the roster. A year or two from now, we'll know exactly what the direction of this team is, and based on the approach they've taken so far, the arrow should be pointing upward. We'll see.