(08-15-2024, 09:01 AM)Mikey Wrote:

(08-14-2024, 06:20 PM)rpr52121 Wrote: Cleveland was available last year because he was hurt. He is now supposed to be healthy.

Also they didn't just do nothing beside signing Morse. They were expecting development of Anton Harrison as a 2nd year, and apparently some development from Hodges and possibly Little. Internal scouting is often more important than outside scouting. 

Plus it's not like they had a lot of salary cap room to work with to bring in more than Morse, especially since they had to sign a guy like Gabe Thomas in case they weren't able to draft a guy like BTJ.

we had darft picks in a year that was overflowing with line help, especially on the interior. We had a previously darfted WR/return guy(Washington), signed a WR/return guy(Duvernay), and darfted a KR specialist who's been out of commission(Robinson). We doubled down on DT (not entirely upset over this but it did overspend on one position over the other). There was PLENTY of opportunity to address the matter in a quality way. We chose not to.

Yup. We took Jordan Jefferson over the following offensive lineman:

Offensive Center: Tanor Bortolini
Offensive Center: Sedrick Van Pran 
Offensive Guard: Mason McCormick

We took Maason Smith in RD2 over the following offensive lineman:

Offensive Center: Zach Frazier
Offensive Tackle/Guard: Patrick Paul
Offensive Tackle: Roger Rosengarten
Offensive Guard: Kingsley Suamataia

It'll be interesting how all of these players fair as rookies. The Maason Smith selection I can find the most forgiving. All things considered, Smith was once billed a top first round selection and his last year at LSU we slowly started seeing the player he could be in the pass rushing department coming off of his injury. Think he had top honors, or, was at least top three in pressures from his position last year. 

It's the Jordan Jefferson selection that kind of surprised me. I was okay with the Javon Foster selection, but, man, I would have been really happy with Bortolini or Van Pran as a potential back-up Center with starting potential, as, they have the traits to start at this level. McCormick was also a guy I liked. I looked at him as this year's Cody Mauch type project. 

Either way, if this offensive line continues to backslide in run blocking and they [BLEEP] the bed in pass protection, it'll fall back on this front office and coaching staff resting it's laurel's on just adding Morse via free agency and Foster via the draft. 

I do have some hope for Steven Jones though out of Oregon. Was happy to see him picked up as an UDFA. He was out last week with the calf injury, but, it'll be fun seeing him at some point hopefully at 6'5, 340. I believe that would make him one of the biggest, if not, the biggest offensive lineman we currently have on the roster. Something we probably need out there.

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