MrEpsYtown

If you like nasty o linemen, here is a good link: https://ontapsportsnet.com/2022/03/24/2022-nfl-draft-nasty-offensive-linemen/ Not sure that I can emphasize any more how much I love Tyler Linderbaum.

I mean who has it? And who is that crazy? Texans? Lions?

If the Bears really like him that much, I guess it’s possible. Probably a long shot but possible.

I am surprised they have not leaked. If the numbers were absurd, I think the Bills would have leaked em so that the court of opinion would see why they would’t match. My guess is that maybe they are trying to free the cap to match or they could be working on a trade with the Bears in exchange for not matching. Also Bates signed the contract offer. So he either winds up with the Bills or Bears under those contract terms. Those are the only possible outcomes, so it is over.

I guess my thing is that JT28, and Mixon were non factors in the Super Bowl. The reason why we could not get to the super bowl was that Levi Wallace was too slow to keep up and we could not get anywhere near the QB. A running back isn’t putting this team over the top. A star corner and pass rush (Miller) does.

Little tidbit on Ariaza on holding. One of the things that makes Matt Haack so good as a holder is that he isn’t your typical soccer kid turned kicker. He was a really good wide receiver in high school who just happened to be good at punting. So he was working on ball skills in practice. Ariaza was a defensive back, playing a bunch of corner and safety in high school. So you have to assume he has some ball skills as it would have been a part of practice. He also kicked and punted, but because he was also a full time position player, he must have some ball skills. He was also a soccer and track star. Elite athlete, hurdler on the track team, sounds like left footed Moorman to me. Bojo is a soccer kid who played football. So never really had to hold or catch a football, or really use his hands at all, and to me, that’s why he is terrible at it.

I mentioned it. And the key thing in my mind is that they drafted Vernon Butler late in the first passing on Xavien Howard who went a few picks later in the second. They went quantity over quality and that was a poor move. We need a high quality corner to stick opposite Tre on a rookie contract plus a 5th year. It makes too much sense. That means first round corner in my mind.

Here are some interesting numbers: Strange is about as close as you can get to Bates in the draft this year. But an underrated thing about Bates is that he is only 25. Strange was a 5 year starter getting a 6th year exception for COVID. Which means he is turning 24 going into the season. Bates just turned 25 and has been in league for 4 years. Johnson has excellent numbers as well, but he is a bit smaller.

Agreed he won’t reach

If things stay as is, imo, they will not wait until the late rounds to draft a corner. In 2016 the Panthers had a pressing need at corner having lost Josh Norman. And they waited until their second round pick to address it with James Bradberry. He turned out to be a good player, they drafted Vernon Butler in the first because the corner value just wasn’t there. In the process they passed on Xavien Howard. Ooops. They followed that by drafting Daryl Worley in the 3rd and Zach Sanchez in the 5th. I can’t fault their process there, but they went quantity over quality, and I am not sure that is the right move. It’s going to come down to value and fit, but to me, the corner strength/value in this draft is between mid first to mid second. If you pass on a corner in the first, I think it could be a big risk and there may not be any left by the time you get to your second round pick.

Good article here, puts the nail on the head imo. He’s right. Don’t do it.

Agreed. I also like taking former corners and making them safeties. Hyde and Poyer were both corners drafted in the 5th and 7th respectively. Both guys slow corners with great instincts and football intelligence.

I like Cross a lot, he seems like a McDermott type of guy. And while they have two awesome safeties, they will have to consider upgrades ready to go at some point. Jaquan Johnson becomes a free agent after this year so it makes sense to refill the depth.

Ideas about this are all over the place, but the strong side player will typically lineup against the three technique and will therefore be in a 1 on 1 pass wise. Typically offenses will slide to the left to protect the blindside of the QB, which in turn leaves the RG and RT in one on ones. So you would want those guys to be athletic. Conventionally, the right side is the power side and the left is the athletic side, but with spread offenses becoming more the norm, it doesn’t really matter. The new norm is that everyone on the line needs to be athletic, and that’s why we are seeing RAS numbers being a thing. Its not the be all end all, and as @Hapless Bills Fan has pointed out, there have been athletic linemen who are terrible. See Andre Dillard. Specifically to Bates, he should be more comfortable on the left side since he played a ton of left tackle in college. But he has been a swing back up for most of his career which means he would have developed skills on both sides.

I hear you. But I would have cut Feliciano before the season started. He has done nothing here besides cost us young players with upside. I would have started the season Dawkins-Boettger-Morse-Bates-Williams. Brown obviously took Williams job. But that was the combination I liked goin in. Probably flip Bates and Boettger. I would have kept Anderson, Doyle, Brown as the backups. I also would have kept Forrest Lamp for his upside, he was hurt all training camp. I really liked the three athletic young guys in Brown, Anderson, Doyle. My analysis of Feliciano is that he should have been gone two years ago.

I would have kept Anderson over Feliciano when he was plucked from the practice squad. He had a nice upside and high RAS. He wound up starting a couple of games for Philly. But again I think this regime was loyal to a fault when we saw how long they stuck with players who weren’t getting it done. Trent Murphy, Feliciano etc etc.

I have talked about it a bit on here, but I see no reason why he can’t.

The only other alternative is, I believe, they can work out some sort of trade with the Bears to not match. But yeah they have to match the offer once he signs it.

Disclaimer, we are talking about a guy who legally changed his name to OCHOCINCO. So, y'know, grain of salt.

Typically this leads to a release. When teams are willing to eat money to move a guy for a pick they are announcing to the world that he ain't coming back.

I agree. If the offer sheet was ridiculous the Bills would have leaked it to show that the Bears overpaid and justify them not matching.

Price played a bunch of guard, as has Hopkins, but they were both pretty bad. I like Turner as the vet and Hernandez as the young reclamation project. We already had an Erik Flowers and he blew.

It is just a bad situation. He had played a ton at left guard and was growing into it. He was extremely durable and then essentially lost his job because he got COVID. He hits the bench, then flipped over the right side. He went through a number of OL coaches and played 4 years with 4 different centers and four different left tackles. Hernandez got blamed for Andrew Thomas' poor play as well. I think he was a little raw coming out, they threw him out there and didn't really do a great job of developing him. Then they threw him into this weird rotation where he was getting a few plays here and there on both sides. But the lack of continuity in the coaching there is what totally screwed up his career imo. Similar in some ways to Ford in that they did not stick with him at RT and got better players and he hit the bench. The Bills beleived that Ford was an impact RT and they didn't really let him prove it. Again, raw guy coming out, but the team didn't really commit to his development.

We would still need Siran Neal and Matt Milano to miss tackles.

Bates has connections in Chicago: "It isn’t a huge surprise Ryan Bates chose Chicago. They have plenty of cap space to meet his price, but they also offer connections. The lineman played under Joe Moorhead in college at Penn State. Moorhead is the mentor of new Bears offensive coordinator Luke Getsy. If that weren’t enough, Ian Cunningham is their assistant GM. Cunningham was part of the Philadelphia Eagles front office that signed Bates as an undrafted free agent back in 2019. Such familiarity was no doubt appealing for the young guard. The question now is what the Bills plan to do. They have five days to decide whether they match the Bears’ offer. Doing so will allow them to retain Bates. Current estimates say the team has somewhere between $2.5-4 million in cap space. So if the Bears wanted to dissuade them from matching, they’d likely offer a deal at $4 million per year or more." https://www.sportsmockery.com/chicago-bears/ryan-bates-takes-step-closer-to-joining-chicago-bears/