(12-31-2018, 02:56 PM)Firesky Wrote:

(12-31-2018, 02:47 PM)TheO-LineMatters Wrote: I was debating about trading Telvin Smith. He looked bad in pass coverage this season and he's just smaller than I'd like. Can we trade him without taking a cap hit though? If we can, I'd do it and move Jack to WLB and bring in a true MLB with size/speed.

Trade him and take whatever cap hit is left on our books. He's a SS playing WLB, at 215 pounds has been an absolute liability this year. He seems to always be in coverage when we're getting torched over the middle for those short/medium gains. He starts plays flat footed, misses gaps, and overshoots assignments, will outright whiff tackles (see Watson's TD last sunday, and Derrick Henry's runs) All i hear about is our "speed at LB" yet we're constantly getting killed by mobile qb's getting to the edge. Yea he gets a lot of tackles (but so did Kirk Morrison) and like Morrison a lot of his stops come on the wrongside of the Line of Scrimmage. He'll get the occasional defensive score, but that hardly makes up for all the plays missed in the game prior to that.

Myles Jack's "true position" is WLB. I think he'd THRIVE there especially if we draft a thumping middle linebacker to play alongside him. I'd trade Telvin now while teams remember his probowl season last year and think this year is an anomaly; if he has another subpar season he will have 0 trade value and we'll be stuck with a $10 million per year cap hit for a tweener player that isn't living up to his paycheck.

What amazes me is that people are so willing to just move on from Fournette after "one bad year" but completely ignore Telvin (who is THE problem with our LB corps/run defense frankly) and don't want to move on from him after "one bad year" and he has 3x the cap hit that Leonard does.

What amazes me is the amount of finger pointing that is going on at most of our good players in general. We had a year that had more injuries than I can remember from any season in recent memory but people are trying to put the blame on individuals rather than the circumstances. Yes Leonard/smith/Jackson/Gipson(the entire team really) had a down year but there was  so much more that went into the outcome than one individual having bad stat lines.

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