Orakpo and Carriker Done for Season

[BigHairedAristocrat]

Originally Posted by The Goat

RGIII (alone) makes QB the most talented position group IMO. Cousins looked good in preseason so that's something. LB group is definitely talented.

I think we did miss Garcon yesterday. Don't remember seeing any of our WRs break a tackle for extra yards.

I think where we disagree is in our definition of "most talented position group." At the moment, RGIII is the most talented player on our team period - and by a fairly wide margin. If we only looked at the starters, i'd agree with you. But when we consider depth, we're by necessity considering the drop off between the starter and the backup. Cousins is the backup and he's an unknown that looked good in preseason - still, the dropp-off between him and RGIII is substantial. If you think QB is a deeper position, you would be essentially say we'd do better as a team with cousins and our starting WRs than RGIII and our backup WRs. I just dont see it.

Using my definition of depth as being drop off in talent between starters and backups, i'd rank our deepest position groups as being (in order):
1. WR
2. LB
3. DL
4. RB
5. TE
6. QB

If we're going to lose players to injury, i think our team can best afford to lose players in that order (WR would hurt our team the least, QB would hurt our team the most). I didnt rank DB at all because we have no talent there to speak of in the first place.

Getting back to the topic of the thread, we've lost a starting LB and DL and have compentent backups to step in. I really dont think the drop off will be that signficant in our starting lineup. We've got GOOD DEPTH at those positions. Honestly, if someone told we were going to lose two defensive starters, and gave me the choice of picking the two to lose, i'd have chosen Carriker and Orakpo. Think of how bad we'd be off if we'd lost Kerrigan and Bowen.