How will our defense hold up next year?

[mlmpetert]

Originally Posted by CRedskinsRule

Might as well go on a mini rant in this thread:


Over and over and over, fans have said, DON"T BE OFFSEASON CHAMPS, Skins need to do it the right way. Build through the draft. Don't overpay.

Well, guess what, if you build through the draft, develop your young guys, and don't grab every stinking name (regardless of level of proficiency) that appears on the UFA lists, then you may in fact need to see the play on the field to determine how well your grooming and development system works. We have invested time and effort in players like Barnes, Riley, Westbrook (if he's still on the team). Maybe they aren't elite, and you certainly need to weed out the outright liabilities. But every pickup in FA is one less player that went through our development system and one more that will later be reflected back as a sign of the same old same old. In fact even the receiver's we brought in to some degree will fight for time with our players we have invested in. Hopefully competition brings the best out, and we see progress from Hankerson, Paul, Austin etc, but on Defense, the group has been together for going on three years, rather than fretting about decline, let's hope that the development system is in place to make our players improve and see an overall improvement in defense. (Fletch is a separate topic, and I hope we get him signed back)

I LOVED last years offseason moves. I LOVE the idea of getting younger and building through the draft, but thats not exactly what we are doing.

We drafted 3 WR's last year. This offseason we signed 2 and are attempting to sign another. While WR was by no means a strength of our team it wasnt the biggest weakness either.

We drafted 1 DB last year in the 7th round while at the same time letting our own guy and argubily our best corner walk. We also signed a younger Josh Wilson who was able to bring excitement to our defensive backfiled, much like Garcon is bringing to our wideout corps.

In 2010 Allen, Shanahan and Haslett made a major change to our defensive scheme that turned the strength of our team into the biggest weakness, and even worse in my opinion created many more holes that needed filling. The D improved in 2011 and many of the holes that were created in the previsous year's change were filled with several mid profile FA signings along with 6 draft picks that were spent on the deffensive unit.

But while the front 7 now looks and smells like a 3-4 defense lacking only a true NT, the secondary, and saftey spot in particular, has fallen apart. Meanwhile we have no draft picks until the third round to go along with our glaring needs at the RT/G positions. Hopefully we can get some late round DB's, but late round gems seem almost mythological or one year wonders when it comes to the CB and S positions.

So we cant just build though the draft, were missing 1st round picks in 2013 and 2014 and only have late round picks to spend on our defensive for this year. I dont think we should break the bank on anyone but unfortunitly we can just groom our own guys.