Peppers says he wants to explore free agency

[Ruhskins]

Originally Posted by The Goat

I'm w/ 53Fan and the cohort who says this is opportunity we should pass on. Build through the draft or through smart FA pick-ups for value type players. No massive paydays for 29 yr old guys who may be coming to the end of their heyday.

I do agree that DE is likely a need for us. On the one hand if we cut JT and resigned him for far less money then he can have right end while Evans and AC swap on the left side (IMO AC is better suited for strong side end than Taylor ever was). More than likely though, as Paintrain has said, JT is out of DC next year and we are down to AC and Evans... unless Blache sees serious potential in Jackson or Wilson we need to go get a legit end. It's times like these I wish we could "develop" diamonds in the rough to address needs instead of constantly needing to draft/sign yet another question mark.

We do need to make sure there is some type of improvement in our D-Line, so we need to make sure we have a player who is ready to play and contribute to the defensive line (in my opinion that would be Bernard the DT from Seattle). No offense but I'm tired of people who blurt out "let's build through the draft" (although you did add the whole part about free agency Goat, so I'm not talking about you in particular) and don't realize that building through the draft means drafting a kid that MAY contribute immediately, but will most likely take two or three years to really contribute. That's what happened last year when we drafted Davis, Kelly, and Thomas...we built through the draft.

Both Haynesworth and Peppers may command a lot of money, if I had to pick one out of those two, it would be Peppers. In my opinion though, I would go after Gross (as I've said it a million times), and draft a DE to develop. I think the teams needs to find out what will happen to Jason Taylor (retirement, restructure, or release from the team) before they would even think about going after Peppers though. I really hope they go after Gross instead.