Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirobaito
To be fair, when you have three or four crappy offensive linemen and no salary cap room, it's tough to believe that they'll be able to fix the line in one offseason.
But you did draft a new center, whose intelligence (he graduated with a degree in engineering!) will hopefully help create the cohesion and security necessary. Livings is at least passable at left guard. And I think most people now assume that there's a wink-wink deal in place June 1st for Tyson Clabo or Eric Winston to come play right tackle.
So that's two new offensive linemen. Right guard would be the only area of massive concern, and you have a ton of competition right now for that spot, from Costa, Bernadeau, Arkin, and Leary. Hopefully one of them will step up.
The only pick I take huge issue with is Escobar, because he's the same type of player as Hanna (all catch, no-block). The players around there you could have taken were Jonathan Hankins, who a lot of people saw as consistently struggling with weight issues. Unless you wanted to reach for Bennie Logan (who I wouldn't have had a problem with), there wasn't a DT available there. But Hankins is the only 1-tech around there, as Logan is a Hatcher/Ratliff 3-tech.
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I'm not sold to the notion that Frederick is set-in-stone as the center. The guy has flexibility to move to guard and I believe Costa will be a net positive to the line since he will be healthy for once. At guard, you then have Frederick, Bernadeau, Livings, and Arkin. I'd say that's not terrible depth on the interior line.
I'll reiterate, the first two picks of this draft were not great in terms of value and over reaching. However, I do think they will be positive contributors to the team. I'm not defending the FO here though. My guess is that they were trying like hell to trade out further but ran out of time and panic picked their guy. I think they are fully aware they could have gotten both players later than they did...
Edit: not to forget, they most likely are going to do something with Free, and I hope that is to cut him not only for the sake of saving some cap room, but also since there are serviceable veteran tackles out there to be had at a much cheaper price.