Quote:1. Hire a coach with a proven winning record as an NFL head coach ... John Gruden, Bruce Arians, 
Andy Reid ... (those were my top 3 choices at the time).

 

2. Keep some of the better players, Knighton, Daryl Smith, Cox, Lowery. None were expensive. Ball and Miller weren't particularly downgrades, but not upgrades either. Smith and Lowery are better than what we have.


 

3. Keep Monroe, and trade down if at all possible rather than drafting Joeckel. Why draft a replacement for the one really good player on the team?


 

 

4. Sign one of the seven(!) good RTs available in free agency in 2013.

1.  Let's be fair here.  Arians was not a long time established head coach with a long proven track record of winning football as head coach.  He got his first shot in Pagano's absence.  He did well in Pagano's absence a couple of years ago, and has done well as Cards coach this year, but he didn't have that long track compared to the other two guys on your list.  As to Gruden, there is no evidence he would have come out of retirement to coach anyone, much less us, and, as I recall (and I am iffy on the details as I type this so please correct me if I am mistaken somehow) KC was Reid's first and only choice.

 

2.  You can make the argument to keep Knighton and Smith, but even if you kept EVERY guy you mentioned here, that doesn't make the difference in wins and losses in any of the first four games.

 

3.  Let's assume you do that...you have three possible to probable ramifications. 

 

A.  Monroe does not re-sign here, you trade down, and you still don't have a LT this year.  At least now you have a guy in Joeckel who, while struggling now, may yet develop as Monroe did into a decent to good, if not perpetually dominant player.   

 

B.  A trade down last year was unlikely because the talent at the top simply wasn't there to generate enough demand to get anything remotely resembling value for the pick.  The Raiders, picking one spot below us, only managed a second round pick trading down to 11.  That extra second round pick didn't make the difference between their talent depleted roster and winning.  It likely wouldn't have with us, either, even if you hired Andy Reid and traded one or both of those 2nd round picks for Alex Smith.  None of the other teams in the top five traded out.

 

C.  At the end of the day, even if you subtract Joeckel, add a second round pick, and even keep Monroe beyond last year along with the other guys in #2 above, that still doesn't make a difference in the outcome in those games.

 

4.  Besides the Washington game, RT was nowhere close to the main cause of our struggles.  Pasztor has actually played decently at RT, and now he's back.  As it stands now, Eric Winston is out of football.  

 

At the end of the day, even with all of the moves you made, we'd still likely have a losing record this year, we'd still likely have been blown out against the Colts, Skins and Chargers, because none of those solutions adequately address the secondary.  With Knighton, Smith, Cox, Lowery and Monroe all on the roster, they never generated any winning records.  

---