1. FS Atogwe cost no draft picks (check his shoulder)
2. WR A. Bryant Bucs dont want him
3. NT Rogers Browns will take a 3rd or 4th for him

I will say this. If we don't get a legit, proven NFL WR.At least 1, we need 2, but we better get at least 1..... Even an old one who might be on his last legs like Mason.....Miami won't win more than 8 games next season.

We can't draft a WR to fix our problems there. We need proven guys. I believe the next 3-6 weeks is the most important in our 2010 season. Because if we dont' land one of these WR's, then we are "pretenders" in the 2010 NFL season.

Teams have caught on to the wild cat and are slowing it down if not flat out stopping it. We have a young QB who needs help in the passing game. In games which we fall behind we are almost always toast because it takes us 13 play drives to score and it eats up too much clock.

I understand they didn't want to pay Boldin $8-10 mill a year. I understand Marshall is a headcase. I understand Miles Austin costs 2 good draft picks. But we better sign Bryant or Mason soon. And then we better be looking at the next tier guys who are available. And if by some off chance we can get a good WR in Rd 1 by trading down. Or in Rd 2....we better jump on it.

Bess and Camarillo are role players at best. Ginn is a huge question mark. Turner is a bust. Hartline has potential but you can't bank on him going into a season. This is the worst group of WR's in the NFL and we need a massive overhaul. Doing nothing isn't an option. Adding one meaningful guy isn't a solution.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/07/2010 07:52AM by MikeO.

I thought the "Marshall visits, no deal" video on Yahoo! sports' NFL page was pretty interesting regarding Marshall's visit to SEA. I had understood that the #6 overall was basically a foregone conclusion as the price. It sounds like that's far from certain.

I am enamored with all of the seemingly high-quality options we have on the table for the #12 pick, but I can't think of one player in the 7-15 range that certainly helps us more now than Marshall, who is only 25 himself. I'm sure it's possible, but Marshall seems like a very proven commodity.

tsstamper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > I am enamored with all of the seemingly
> high-quality options we have on the table for the
> #12 pick, but I can't think of one player in the
> 7-15 range that certainly helps us more now than
> Marshall, who is only 25 himself. I'm sure it's
> possible, but Marshall seems like a very proven
> commodity.

Watch out tsstamper!!!!
There are certain forum members, not naming names, for whom draft picks are worth more than gold itself. Some of these boys would trade every guy we have just to get more draft picks. So, stating that someone is a proven commodity, and is therefore more valuable than a lottery tick.... er I mean draft pick, is complete and total blasphemy!!! By the way, I am in complete agreement with you. If Parcells did his due dilligance on Marshall, and approved, I would give Denver our #1 for Marshall and smile while doing it. The only #1's we have had that have even approached meeting their "draft value" have been Long and Ronnie, and with his injuries, Ronnie is a stretch, though the jury is still our on Vontae. We threw away the draft picks we got from Welker. Please oh please give me a proven commodity for Chad Henne to throw to!!!

Well regarding Marshall....he is only 24 (I believe) which is a young as some of the guys actually coming out of college.....AND HE IS PROVEN.

I might argue that he, on the field, is worth the #12 pick. But my issue with Marshall is that he doesnt have all his ducks in a row. He is an NFL bad-boy. That is what makes him risky...to me.

---------------------

"When you suck long enough, you get a Hickey"

The Hawks aren't going to give up # 6 and likley not 14. Rumors are some other deal is in the works. Maybe Dion Branch and a 2011 pick, so we could steal him giving up our #1, but I think he wants to go to Seatle to play with Bates, but money talks, ask Antrele Rolle!

I agree unless we strike gold and find a Desean Jackson WR is our top priority. Pressure on the QB is our second priority. Can Wake provide this??


Add Marshall and Otogwe, Clark, Bodden or even Richard Marshall via FA and trade Solai or Thigpen & a pick for Rogers.

Go get Sapp, Norwood, Hughes or Kao Misi in the second

+ Marshall
+ DB Help
+ Rogers
+ Sapp Norwood, Misi, Hughes

Add a TE like Dickerson, Graham, Pitta. Moeki later and RB help like Hardesty , Ben Tate or Joique bell and we have improved big time

If Marshall's head was on right, and he didn't have off the field issues, and the coach hadn't benched him for the last game of the season because he thought he was faking an injury, I would trade our 1st rounder for him. But, if that was the case, the Bronco wouldn't be trading him, period.

The main issue with guys like Marshall and Boldin is that the team not only has to give up a draft pick...they have to pay a big contract.

Last year Knoshon Moreno was the 12th overall and he got a $16million 5 year deal with another $6mill in incentives which are not all easily earned.

Boldin ( who was a #2 WR, who was traded for a 3rd & 4th) just signed a 4 year $28 million contract. Marshall ( who is a #1 WR an will be acquired with a 1st round pick) is going to be looking for a lot more than that. He is going to want $10 million a year with a big chunk up front.

So Parcells is thinking why pay $10million and a 1st round pick for 1 WR that was drafted in the 4th round?

The league leader Wes Welker wasn't drafted, Miles Austin wasn't drafted. The Saints won the Superbowl with Marques Colston who was drafted in the 7th round and Devery Henderson who was a 2nd round pick.

If we look at last season our offence was 'decent' enough to win games. The reason we missed the play-offs was that our defence would disappear for an entire quarter or would be unable to stop teams that we had beaten from getting back up and killing us.

Do we need a #1 WR? ABSOLUTELY! Do we need an 'elite' guy? NO

What we need is a Defence that can put pressure on the QB and make teams work for every point they get. A 'D' that makes teams kick FG's instead of TD converts. A D that can preserve a 10 point lead.


We run a 3-4 Defense and do not have a 'locked in' starter at NT. That is a problem. We do not have all of our starters at OLB. Again...for a 3-4 Defense? uh...crucial. Oh and we released our starting FS.

Trading for Marshall would be a mistake.

There will be several sppedy WR's with decent size available in the 2nd and 3rd rounds. And we can still sign Mason, Bryant, or Chambers....and still have our 12th pick to use for Defence.

That is where we get our guy

We really do have 3 #1 priorities, WR, & pass rush, and now in the middle with Ferguson likely done.

You are rolling the dice hoping you find the next big WR drafted
rounds 3 and below. Is it possible? yes Could Demaryius Thomas, Lafell, or Andre Roberts be big time receviers, this years Johnny Knox, Marques Colston? Absolutley, but they could be busts like many other wideouts. Our 2nd and 4ths were big busts in 2009.Turner couldn't even get on the field.

If we pass on WR in the first two round the chances of finding a gamebreaker diminish.

Who knows , Ted Ginn could work his butt of and improve his hands and turn into the deep threat expected when he was drafted.

No pass ruch means trouble in the secondary

No WR threat means limited threat to spread the field passing which usually means more trouble running the ball and possibly more sacks as WR can't get open..


Marshall is a top 5 WR in the league, but does have some baggage,but as with most in life, the greater the reward, the greater the risk.

The challenge is to move Thigpen or pennington, and maybe Lankford Solai & Merling and draft wisely to fill holes in these positions.

We released or lost 3 of our top 5 tacklers, this is another concern.

Rogers could help, but at what cost?

Decisons the brass get paid to make, hopefully they make wise ones. Our record in recent years isn't a good one.

Like I said before...we don't need an 'elite' #1 WR ...we just need a legitimate #1 WR.

Colston ranked 26th in the league....they won the Supebowl.

We need a guy who is 6' 1" or tallerr, with sub 4.6 speed and decent hands. A guy who has the speed to get behind the secondary will force teams to switch up their coverage between Ginn and the new guy. 2 fast guys going downfield 'stretches the field' and opens things up for guys like Hartline, Fasano, Bess.

He doesn't have to be Marshall or Andre Johnson...he could be a Greg Jennings, Derek Mason type player. And those guys are available this year.

You only have 1 NT on the field in a 3-4....he better be able to do the job. That isn't established yet.

You can have 2-5 WR's on the field...important...but not as crucial.

Also...there is a long list of WR's who were busts in the 1st round and a long list of WR's who were undrafted or low round picks who became #1 WR's.

If you look at NT's...most are drafted from the top rounds and stick around a while. Few of them come out of no-where.

OLB is a position that occasionally sees someone pop up out of no-where..and Cam Wake might be the guy...but...Parcells is good at drafting them in the high rounds. So I think he is going to go with what has worked for him in the past.

Guys like Andre Johnson and Brandon Marshall are rare. Realist is right. We don't have to have one of those elite guys. What we cannot continue to go without is a legitimate NFL starter at the WR position. And we don't have one. Brian Hartline might turn into one, but that's not good enough.

There are 4 legitimate starters available as unrestricted free agents:
Derrick Mason
Antonio Bryant
Chris Chambers
Terrell Owens

Owens comes with a bunch of baggage, and appears to have a couple of suitors already. Kansas City is working on re-signing Chambers. That leaves 2 guys on the list. We need to sign one of them. We have a young QB that needs help developing, and he cannot do that without weapons at his disposal. No question, we need to draft another guy with a large upside. But, how much of an impact is that rookie going to have? Rookie wideouts usually take some time to develop. There's no guarantee any rookie is going to be an impact player for us in 2010. We cannot go into the season hoping that one rookie is going to transform our passing game. We need a veteran and the rookie, both. And it looks like our only choices are going to be Bryant or Mason.

Mason is old, wants 2 years. We are supposedly are talking to him. Bryant would be the best option, but will the Tuna admit it?
Mardy Gilyard or Andre Roberts, Dez Briscoe, Jordan Shipley, Stephen Williams or Riley Cooper could be good later round finds .

Kelton Tindal at 6'3" worth a look, runs sub 4.3.

jlyell13 Wrote:
---------------------
The challenge is to move Thigpen or pennington, and maybe Lankford Solai & Merling and draft wisely to fill holes in these positions.



Why in the world would we try to get rid of Langford and/or Merling??? Two big bodies, who are young, stout, and have been real solid in our D-line rotation. These guys haven't been racking up sacks left and right, but they are good against the run, still young and getting better. These guys have upside and aren't costing us a fortune. They're on their rookie contracts and are crucial to our front 3. We get rid of them, and we're gutted and bleeding on the D-line.

Moreover, these guys wouldn't fetch any high or even mid-level round picks being that they are under the radar and haven't made names for themselves yet in the NFL, so it would be a total waste. We would lose 2 up and coming players who give us a healthy young D-line to build from for the future.


Your logic confuses me. Let's get rid of solid young players, creating holes at their positions, thus forcing us to address said holes we just created during the draft with unknown commodities that will come with the huge risk of being busts- being taken later in the draft and all. And do all this while we already have huge holes to fill already at a number of different positions???? That move automatically makes our team worse.

As for Thigpen an Pennington, I have no idea what the rush to kick these guys off the team is. Pennington is great to have around to keep tutoring Henne and in case he goes down, to step in and lead the team.

Thigpen really impresses me and I think he is an absolute solid starter in this league with a little bit of coaching and some legit weapons. I would consider moving them if a deal came along that made us all sit back in our chairs and go "Whoooaaa, now this we have to talk about!" But outside of an enticing deal being brought to our doorstep, I see no reason that we should be desperately shopping these guys when they have so much worth on our team right now, and are not worth giving up for some cheap late 5th round pick.

I'm cool with Bryant or Chambers. but, Mason has been the most consistent both in production and personality. He would be the best mentor for the young guys.

panteraize wrote


"Why in the world would we try to get rid of Langford and/or Merling??? Two big bodies, who are young, stout, and have been real solid in our D-line rotation. These guys haven't been racking up sacks left and right, but they are good against the run, still young and getting better. These guys have upside and aren't costing us a fortune. They're on their rookie contracts and are crucial to our front 3. We get rid of them, and we're gutted and bleeding on the D-line. "


Maybe because so far they have been somewhat busts, don't tackle well and can't get pressure on the QB? (2.5 sacks)This is a fairly deep draft we can replace them with younger players. We wouldn't miss either of them. We need pass rushers, thay are not, that is why we had to sign wake. yeah they may not have value.

Go get Griffin or graham, misi, Hughes, Scheffield, or Hardy to put some pressure on the QB. This was a main problem with the D, QB's with too much time.


As far as Thigpen, I love him, he is really our #2, but have read their are several GM's that think he is a starting NFL QB, so he has trade value. I would prefer to get rid of pennington, found it an odd signing after wasting a 2 on White and trading for Thigpen. I doubt we keep 4 Qb's. Several teams could use Thigpen if their #1'as go down. Pennington's arm ws weak before his last injury. That signing is a sign someone will be moved, and it won't be White..

The problem with getting rid of Merling or Langford is that despite their low sack total, they're both big, young, developing D-lineman that are a big chunk of what we've got upfront and we wouldn't get anything worth anything for them at this point anyway. Even if we do upgrade at DE, having both those guys gives us some stout depth for our D-line rotation. Both are good against the run, which is the big deal with a 3-4 DE anyway.

Also, Merling is a playmaker in the making, who just doesn't give it his all during practice. That's why he doesn't see more minutes. But he has batted down passes and had that huge INT against Farve that he ran all the way back for a TD like a swift LB. Merling has a nose for the ball in a DE sense. He also gets pressure on the QB which is one of the most overlooked things that defensive lineman do. Sacks are one thing, but you can be just as effective simply getting pressure on the QB, getting in his face, forcing errant throws:

See Cameron Wake's game-winner against Tom Brady, forcing the desperate, errant pass. What, you think Crowder made some kind of play on that ball? Brady tossed it right to Crowder as Wake was smothering him. No sack, no tackle, no anything for Wake. It was just the game winning play that goes silent on Wake's stat sheet.

These guys are going to continue to get better. I say hold on to them.

I think if you want to get to the QB, focus on doing it at the OLB position. In that sense, yeah I agree with you, go get Brandon Graham. Start Wake. Etc. Let's continue to stop the run up front, and develop a viscious pass rush from our OLB positions.