<p style="font-family:'Gotham Narrow SSm A', 'Gotham Narrow SSm B', Arial, sans-serif;color:rgb(41,41,41);font-size:13px;">Further breakdown:

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<p style="font-family:'Gotham Narrow SSm A', 'Gotham Narrow SSm B', Arial, sans-serif;color:rgb(41,41,41);font-size:13px;">1. Roy Miller has 12 tackles, 0 sacks, 0 forced fumbles. Terrance Knighton has 12 tackles, 2 sacks, and 0 forced fumbles. Therefore Terrance Knighton is better than Roy Miller, even if we look only at stats. If you look at actual game film the difference is even more pronounced. Denver is quite pleased to have Knighton, who they think they got a deal on and who is very solid for them, and we have Miller, who is almost completely invisible. Yet, they get paid the same amount, for a deal of the same duration. Hmmmm…. Also nowhere on here did I compare Knighton to Marks. I think Marks was a good signing. What I am saying is that is we had signed Marks and Knighton instead of Marks and Miller, our defense would be better off.

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<p style="font-family:'Gotham Narrow SSm A', 'Gotham Narrow SSm B', Arial, sans-serif;color:rgb(41,41,41);font-size:13px;">2. I think that letting Cox walk was the move I agree with the most, because of Blackmon’s solid play and how much money it saved us.

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<p style="font-family:'Gotham Narrow SSm A', 'Gotham Narrow SSm B', Arial, sans-serif;color:rgb(41,41,41);font-size:13px;">3. Smith was coming off a major injury and is old, but it was not an injury that was considered career threatening, and even after the injury when he came back he had not showed major signs of slowing down. Those arguments could have been valid had he wanted a huge money deal, but he signed with the Ravens for next to nothing. Sure we signed Geno for half the money, and he is younger, but if you want to look at just stats again Smith has 62 tackles, 1.5 sacks, 1 forced fumble, and 2 interceptions. Hayes has 48 tackles, 0 sacks, 0 forced fumbles, and 0 interceptions…. How does that merit not resigning Smith again? Plus, in the best case scenario, they could have signed Hayes and Smith, then had Hayes and Allen compete for the third lineback spot, and had a solid back up left over for depth. On top of that the leadership he brings to defense is almost worth it on its own.

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<p style="font-family:'Gotham Narrow SSm A', 'Gotham Narrow SSm B', Arial, sans-serif;color:rgb(41,41,41);font-size:13px;">4. FB is not a useless position like some people think it is. FBs are necessary to help in pass protection, which our team desperately needs, and to help open lanes for our runners, again something we desperately need. Jones was old, but he was experienced and still one of the best FBs in the NFL. Mojo needed all the help he could get this year with our interior offensive line situation the way it is, and our QBs needed the extra protection as well. Instead we let him walk, and now both of those things are a huge issue. Stats don’t come close to telling the story for a FB, so to try and compare the two based on that alone is ludicrous. I am not saying Ta’ufo’ou is a bad FB, I think he is generally solid, but Greg Jones was one of the best, and our team is sorely missing him now. I have no quantifiable evidence to support this, because there are no stats that say how many times a FB was the lead blocker and open a lane, or how many times the FB picked up a free blitzer or man who got past the O-line to prevent a sack. But again, because of how little a difference there is in each players contract, it doesn't make sense to part ways with the better player and sign a patch player who is worse, simply because of age.

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<p style="font-family:'Gotham Narrow SSm A', 'Gotham Narrow SSm B', Arial, sans-serif;color:rgb(41,41,41);font-size:13px;">So overall, I would not say that I am mad about any of the things that Caldwell did. If you had read what I said above, you would see I was simply breaking down the differences between what we let go, and what we brought in. With the exception of the Cox deal, almost none of the changes saved us a massive amount of money. He didn’t create more depth at all, he simply cut off old bandages and put on new, slightly worse bandages because they were just a bit cheaper.

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<p style="font-family:'Gotham Narrow SSm A', 'Gotham Narrow SSm B', Arial, sans-serif;color:rgb(41,41,41);font-size:13px;">If you really wanted to contest what I was saying, you could say that the players used to replace Smith and Jones were much younger, but Ta’ufo’ou probably won’t be here within a year anyways, and Geno might be relegated to a back up role if another young linebacker steps up, as he has not shown himself to be a building block for the future, which is the only defense for going with youth over age, thus making this a wasted year with him starting instead of Smith. I never knocked the Geno signing, I thought it was a generally good idea, but if you had kept Smith and signed Hayes, we could have been in a much better situation than we are now. Hayes/Allen, [BLEEP], and Smith as a linebacking corp would be a lot better than what we have now, and we could still have let go of Smith at the end of this year and been none the worse for it.

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